By Vasja Zupan, President of Matrix
One of the biggest selling points of the cryptoverse is how it addresses the middleman issue. You want to transfer some Bitcoin abroad? No need to turn to a business entity like Western Union, just pay the gas fee and put the transaction on the blockchain. Need a loan? There’s DeFi services that can hand you one out, no need for a bank to get involved. But all too often, something else accompanies this decentralization—namely, the lack of sufficient customer support. In cryptoverse, no one can hear you scream at your monitor.
Just this August, a crypto exchange found itself facing a barrage of public criticism over its customer support practices in the wake of hacker attacks on its users which depleted their accounts. The saga still continues today, despite the company’s commendable efforts to step up its customer support game. And the word “company” is quite important in this context, as it refers to a registered business entity with a physical HQ. When using services offered by such a traditional entity, clients are arguably quite reasonable to expect traditional support on its behalf. The same may not necessarily be as easy when dealing with an algorithm based on the blockchain, as it is hard to imagine a piece of software leasing a support center on its own.
Of course, though, no algorithm is written by itself, and humans building decentralized projects usually do make the effort to make the final product user-friendly, or at least usable. The Internet is nevertheless full of customer service complaints aimed at a multitude of other protocols, centralized and not, with users stuck in lengthy email exchanges on all sorts of problems, from a dysfunctional referral code to frozen withdrawals. The testimonies on how dealing with customer support can be a rough ride for crypto owners do point to a challenge that needs to be tackled head on by the cryptoverse.
Why good customer support is a must
Simply put, we must begin to do better as an industry, making sure the customers always know the service provider has their back. There’s a whole plethora of reasons to do so.
First of all, the crypto ecosystem, as a whole, tends to work like something reminiscent of an insider club, where the most exciting projects are built by developers for developers, with the expectation that everyone knows what they are doing. The problem is, though, that while the regular public is increasingly open to getting involved in crypto, the knowledge required is simply not there. Besides a larger push for crypto literacy, this calls for better customer support set in place to account for the cases where a client’s crypto enthusiasm surpasses their crypto awareness.
So there is the business case for customer support: As more people get interested in crypto and begin to invest into digital assets, it does make sense to welcome them with open hands. More investors bring more finance for projects and developers to innovate, fostering long-term growth of the entire ecosystem. Delivering good customer service is simply a matter of sustaining this growth. A client who exits crypto due to an unfortunate experience with a bugged password restore form ultimately and inadvertently hinders this growth, while a customer who has this issue fixed quickly and effectively may bring their friends into crypto too, thus amping up this growth.
Reputation is also at stake here, not just for specific services, but for the cryptoverse itself. In recent years, crypto has pulled off a staggering public relations victory. Once perceived as a fringe and shadowy ecosystem for hackers and criminals selling all sorts of things that shouldn’t be sold, it now serves as an asset class that major institutions are lining up to enter. As important as institutional embrace may be, though, it makes little sense to snub the Main Street, and everyday people looking to enter crypto should have every opportunity to do so with minimal headache and maximum confidence. The money of the future must come equipped with a user experience to match.
Getting skin in the game
The main takeaway for the industry from all the recent buzz is just how important it is to work on making sure that your users never feel like you've left them behind. The next logical step from there is to realize, sooner rather than later, that moving beyond simply aspiring to actually delivering good customer service takes considerable investment.
This is where the diversity of the crypto space comes back into play. In this industry, you have more or less traditional, centralized business entities working side by side with international groups of enthusiasts pursuing a joint vision and incentivized to contribute by native tokens. In either scenario, customer support should never be an afterthought. Centralized crypto projects must allocate appropriate funds for customer support off the bat and make sure to provide support staff with the resources needed to be effective at the job.
For less conventional projects and teams, there are still ways to execute tech support effectively. The tokenomics behind any given project must include allocations for customer support as part of the assets forming the project’s budget. Ideally, projects must also devise mechanisms to reward developers, volunteer support agents, or even regular community members for helping users in need of assistance. Such tools would only help to bolster user engagement, granting enthusiasts an added opportunity to get rewards for their positive contributions to the community.
The cryptoverse is already on its way into the mainstream, speeding ahead to a glorious future with more users joining in and more use cases being brought to life. It certainly has no need for anything that may turn potential users away or hinder its progress, and one of the ways to make sure that’s not happening is by getting the customer support right.
About the Author
Vasja Zupan is the President of Matrix, the first Virtual Assets MTF (Multilateral Trading Facility) and Custodian to be launched under the regulations of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of ADGM (Abu Dhabi ). Prior to joining Matrix Exchange, he was COO at Bitstamp, EU’s first fully-licensed and the world’s longest-standing cryptocurrency exchange, and managed the turnaround of the distressed Kolektiva Group multinational for the German Rebate Networks VC.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.