Ep. 36 Creating Wow Moments: how to scale and provide excellent customer service

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to the Revolut Insider Podcast where we explore all things Revolut from the Inside Out one episode at a time. I'm your host Alex Krill and joining me today is Kang Junio, General Manager for Customer Support and Operations. Hi, Kang, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me today, Alex. Well, thank you for being here and joining me to talk about what it takes to run customer support at scale for a global company like Revolut. During sub-odd in Revolut as such a scale is quite impressive, so happy to tell you more. It's a really massive operation because you oversee a team of over 3,000 people, which include the agents who communicate directly with our over 50 million customers. So, Kang, when we hear Revolut talking about this concept of delivering wow, what does that mean exactly? What does exceptional support look like? So, the fact that we are providing support in Revolut as such a global scale, for me, it's quite impressive already. Just for context, we provide support to over 40 countries in different languages and we do this 24/7. We process more than 1 million tickets monthly, which means we solve more than 1 million problems on a monthly basis. Incredible. And what makes it more impressive is that in Revolut, we have so many different financial products. We feature added so frequently, almost every day. But to provide exceptional support, the goal is relatively simple. What customer really wants is for their request to be solved as quick as possible. Yeah. There are three key ingredients that we use to get this to happen. Okay. One is we provide very quick responses. Second, we make sure if they have a problem, we draw the simplest line to solve their problem, which means no bouncing around teams and we obscure our agents to do it straight away. So instead of you having to be transferred to somebody else, this person can answer your question right away. That's correct. And then the last thing we do is we make sure our response is excellent quality. What I mean by that is we really show we care and we go the extra mile to solve the problem. What is going that extra mile mean to you? Going the extra mile in customer support is for example, show that we really care that we want to solve the problem for the customer now. So give you an example of a project we've done last quarter. When a customer wants to do a cut payment and let's say their cut is damaged, historically we say we'll help you order a new card and you arrive in like one or two days. Okay. This is pretty good experience. But while we go in an extra mile, we realize that when people want to do a cut payment and their cut is damaged, which is rare, we teach them how to use a virtual card so they can do their cut payments straight away. So while they wait for their card, they can still do the payment that they want to. Exactly. So this is an extra mile that we do to deliver well. Because if you think about the previous experience, we help you order a cut. It's pretty nice already. Yeah. But to help you solve your problem to make that payment now is a well experience. Exactly. It's relatively simple, but that's what we do. Like on a large, very focused basis. I like how you put that into context of saying going that extra mile is actually quite simple, because we have that option to provide a virtual card. So why not help someone learn how to use it? So they can still solve their problem in the short term, which is make the payment, but in the long term, by replacing this damaged card. Exactly. And you mentioned we provide support for over 40 countries around the world. So when we're talking about spanning so many regions and languages, what does it take to provide that consistent high quality experience at this scale? So the tree key ingredients that I mentioned just now, we measure these tree things every day. So we measure how quick we respond. We measure how long does it take for us to solve customer query from start to end. And we measure how customer rate or support in the form of a net boom or the score. So if we measure everything and we check everything, if there's any gaps that comes up, we solve it straight away. That's how we make sure it's always consistent that we provide a well experience. So it's not just about training agents to provide that great service, but it's about tracking the data behind it to make sure that we're consistent approach to executing on these three key pillars. So when we measure these tree metrics after that, the dream team takes over essentially. We have a dedicated team of analysts to answer customer queries every day. And then we also have a dedicated team of production managers and operations managers who are building processes, tools, frameworks to help our front line doesn't achieve this every day. And then we have a dedicated product team of product owners, engineers and data scientists who are building and improving the tools we use to give a well experience to our customers. It's really a dream team effort to make sure that every part is working correctly. Just an example. Last year in 2024, we improve the time to respond by 3X. And more impressively, we improve the time to solve customer query by 9X, which means compared to last year, if you come to us with a query, we solve it a lot quicker. I think for me, in general, as a consumer, as a customer, that's what I look for is, okay, I want my problem to be solved, but I want my problem to be solved quickly. I don't want to be waiting over a long time to talk to someone or to get someone to resolve my issue. If you think about it, most of our customers enjoy our product and they just want to use it smoothly. So the whole objective of customer support is if you ever need help, we solve it super, super quick, and then you can go on with your day because everyone's super busy, right? Yeah, exactly. How does problem solving play a role in helping so many customers? Problem solving is like the heart of customer support because we solve customer's issues every day, more than one million monthly. So problem solving goes from the agents, they solve customer problem every day to also our operations managers and production managers. To consistently solve problems for customers, we need to build strong frameworks and all the procedures that is basically builds to deliver well and solve customer queries. So we have problems solving throughout the organization in customer support. When it comes to scaling operations, it's not just about adding more people, but you have to rely on technology as well. How does technology or AI play a part and factor into customer support? Right now, we've advanced us of AI and technology in revenue. Of course, we have product company, we take advantage of that. I think what customers see most is our chatbot. So chatbot quite consistently solves probably half of the queries we have in customer support. So meaning if a customer has a question, the chatbot is able to answer it before even reaching an agent. Exactly. It provides quite consistent experience. And then we also use smaller tools that it's not necessarily seen by our customers. So for example, AI routing, where we use AI to route chats to agents who are most knowledgeable in specific features. So this way, we always have experts answering the features they know best. Exactly. I think it's really smart because when a subject matter expert becomes really knowledgeable about a certain feature, they're able to answer that query and feel passionate about it because they really know what they're talking about. And I think ultimately that provides one more factor that adds to this recipe of delivering that exceptional customer service. Exactly. Because they do these chats almost every day. They know the feature inside of. Yeah. And can you know your background I've come to know is in operations. And you've been I've reviewed for how long now for last years. And the last year you've taken on another leadership role of now being general manager for customer support and operations. Before that, you've had several leadership roles. What have you learned about leading and growing operations, especially for such a large company like Revolut? At least for the departments that I've led, which is more operational type departments. The main key is simplicity. What we do every day is we make sure we build tools, frameworks, procedures that is super simple and intuitive. There's almost second nature. Because if you want to scale, let's say producing a wild chat for like 3,000 employees, you need to make procedures super simple that people can follow intuitively every day. That's the first thing we always do. We always make sure you don't have to second guess whatever you do. It's like taking a tube. You walk to the in front of the train, the door open. You get on the train. So it's like our processes, right? You get a chat. You know what you need to do with the processes we have. And then you just provide well experience. It's like second nature. So that's the main thing we try to aim for when we try to scale to a bigger organization and like operations. Then the second key is hiring exceptional talent. When I talk about all the tools, procedures, process, frameworks that we build to achieve that simplicity, we need very smart people to be able to build that and scale it to like 3,000 people to follow. Essentially. It's like asking someone to explain something simple that is relatively complex. You kind of need to like weed out all the complexities that people don't really need to know and just focus on the key points. And that's how we build all these tools. And you really need smart people to be able to do that. So the second key is hiring for exceptional talent, which I focus on every day. when you think about the subjective the revenue that has of reaching 100 million customers, you need to have these frameworks, these simple policies and procedures in place that allow a scaling operation to continue its growth easily. - When we grow super fast and most every day, we put in all these procedures and frameworks to manage the change. So our change management process is pretty solid. So let's say CEO says, "Tomorrow I want to launch a new feature, we should be able to absorb, right?" We can basically understand with our machine learning models capacity planning, we can forecast chats or queries with my gets, and we can quickly produce procedures for maybe a couple hundred agents to basically follow to produce a wild chat. - A lot goes into customer support. I think it's invisible to the customer, which is the point. We want it to be seamless, but when we look behind the curtain, there's a lot that goes into really delivering quality service. - Exactly, exactly. - All right, King, well, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, I want to ask you about what you've learned in operations, because you've come from an unexpected background. I know the automotive industry. - Yes, yes. - So I want to hear kind of how you can bring a fresh perspective to solving complex problems. - Sure, happy the shame off, Alex. Great, we'll be right back with more insider views. This episode of the Revolute Insider Podcast is brought to you by Revolute. Thank you to the 50 million customers around the world who have joined us on this journey to change the way the world does money. And if you want to join the revolution, come be part of the future of finance. Check out our open careers at Revolute.com/careers. We're back on the Revolute Insider Podcast here with King, June, Yo, General Manager of Customer Support and Operations here at Revolute. King, before you were leading the customer support department, can you tell me a little bit more about your journey through Revolute and how you started here? - My time in Revolute is quite a journey. I joined four years plus ago as a junior operations manager in FinkRime product and services. So I saw a lot of problems there to basically enhance security for our customers. Within that two and a half years in FinkRime, I moved from junior operations manager to senior operations manager. So that was my first department. And then I joined Expansions Department as the head of operations and strategy. And what I did there is essentially help customers who relaunch to a new country to get started easily and continue to use Revolute essentially. So that was my third year, more or less. And then last year, I moved to Customer Experience and then now the General Manager of Customer Support Operations. And I know you worked in an interesting field before joining Revolute, the automotive industry. Can you tell me about that experience for you and what skills you found surprisingly valuable when you apply them to working in Fintech? - So I think the two skills that is most transferable is problem solving and process building. And I started my career in automotive. It's kind of like a blessing in disguise because in automotive, you actually see the physical product. So my first problem that I solve in automotive is like, why does the door seal not fit into the body of the door? - The seal, the ghost of the ground. - The seal, yeah. Exactly. And you kind of like look at the problem and it's physical and it stays at your face. You start to ask question like, is it only on the right front door and not on the back doors or the left door? And then you use data to see why it always like this. And then you build the process to track the journey of these parts and see where the problem actually starts. - Uh-huh. - This is standard problem solving and process building, right? You break down the problem, you use data and you map out the process. - And you get to the root cause. - Exactly. But the main thing is, is very physical in automotive. So it's very intuitive. Once you get the data and you build the process, the root cause becomes super obvious and then you build a solution to solving. That's the same skill that is transferred to Revolute when I do my role here. So for example, customer support, we analyze why some chats takes two agents to solve rather than one. And we ask the same questions, why, right? Why for the same topic, we have more people to solve it than just one. And then we use data to break down the problem. Maybe it's a time of the day. And what we found is like, during break times, it happens more often. So what we do is, we build a change over process for our agents to have a smooth wrap up and transition. And then the number of chats that are solved by just one agent has increased more than before. You know, I don't think a lot of people realize that operations managers can come from such different industries. What kind of backgrounds or skills do you think that makes someone really successful in an operations role? So for example, in my team, we have a lot of successful production managers and operations managers from warehousing, or automotive like myself and even from the military. So what I see from people from these industries is they are excellent in problem solving, process building, and actually an additional touch is that they've managed a lot of people before. And right now, to be honest, it's quite an amazing opportunity to join customer support and operations in Revolute because of all the AI and technology advances that we have and how is changing this industry. I urge anyone who is interested to apply no matter what industry you're in, especially if you possess this skills. Great problem solving, ability to process build and manage people. Exactly. So if you're tired of looking at boxes true to convey about in warehousing or looking at the same carpets, join Revolute. Yeah, okay. - A change, right? - A change, yes. And work remotely. - And work remotely, exactly, yeah. - And for those who are already in support, maybe in different companies, what advice do you have when it comes to being able to deliver a wow experience? - It's back to the tree key ingredients. You respond quickly, always keep your customers in mind, and go the extra mile to solve their problem as quick as possible. - And I think this is the case for any industry, right? Not just for financial services, but for retail, for hospitality, is being able to listen to understand what the problem is, respond quickly and efficiently. - Yeah, that applies to all industries. Do you have any tips for future support team members for how to stand out in your interview? - Yeah, I think for production managers and operations managers who want to join customer support and operations, showcase the skills that we really look for. And my advice would be just be brave in sharing your example. As it may not be too obvious that these skills are transferable, but we really value if you are expert in these skills in your own field, and we're confident it's transferable over here. - What are you listening to potential team members and you're hearing examples, what do you look for? - So for problem-solving is how candidates break down your problem to very small chunks and solve the biggest bucket first. - Okay. - And process building is whether or not they have experience in building a process, optimizing a process that is used by a lot of people, which in reality is what we have to do in customer support. - And for people management, we're looking for examples of how people lead their teams to success in the simplest way possible. - I think that's great advice. Oftentimes we go into an interview not knowing exactly what we should talk about. So I think having these three key elements in mind of how to structure your experience, I think it would be really helpful. - I hope many apply. (laughing) - Well, we're almost out of time, so I just have one more question for you, King. What advice would you have given yourself when you were just starting out in your career? - Success often comes from trial and error. So just keep trying, provide the way you're trying is the most logical way. (laughing) - And don't be afraid of failure. - Yeah. - 'Cause most inventions come from trial and error. - True. - Well, thank you so much, King, for being on the show. Today I really appreciate you giving me some insight into the world of customer support and how revolute is delivering wow to 50 million customers around the world. - Thank you Alex for having me. - And for those listening, you can add the podcast to your favorites so you don't miss an episode and follow us on Instagram at RevoluteInsider. Thanks for tuning in to the Revolute Insider podcast where we take a look at all things revolute from the inside out. Until next time, remember to never settle because the sky is not the limit, it's just the beginning. Revolute, change the way you money. (upbeat music)