Scaling fintech - How customer support can drive your product

In the world of financial services and fintech, trust is everything. 

Your customers rely on you to handle their finances, protect their data, and ensure their transactions go smoothly. But you only get one shot (as Eminem would say), and a single breach of that trust can be enough to lose a customer for good.

That's why having a strong relationship with customer support and ops, isn't just a "nice to have", it's a core part of your product discovery. 

Throughout my career, I’ve advocated that customer support and operations should be woven into every stage of the product lifecycle, from initial discovery to final delivery. The way you handle disputes, fraud, and account issues is just as important as the new features you build.

Use self-service to create scale and value

For Afterpay, enabling self service capabilities wasn’t about cost reduction, it was about automating simple, repetitive questions that freed up our customer support and operations teams to focus on what they do best: handling high-value, complex issues that build trust and drive growth. This was a key part of their global expansion.

Your support teams are your product experts

Your support teams are on the front lines, talking to customers every day. They have a unique window into your customers' challenges, frustrations, and needs. Afterpay found that feedback from support and operations teams consistently pointed to opportunities for product improvement, including:

• Payment declines: customers were often confused about why their transactions failed, which eroded their trust in the platform.
• Disputes: the dispute resolution process was a black box for both customers and merchants.
• Account recovery: customers who had already resolved an issue faced a frustratingly long and complicated process to get back on their feet.
• Payment flexibility: as our customer base grew, so did their demands and expectations for more flexible payment options.

These weren't just support tickets, they were opportunities to make our product better.

A framework for fintech teams

Here's a simple framework you can use to put customer support at the heart of your product strategy.

1. Create a structured feedback loop: don't let customer support feedback fall through the cracks. Create regular forums where your support and operations teams could share insights with product managers. This continual feedback look allows teams to quickly identify and prioritise systemic issues.

2. Make self-service a priority (but for the right reasons): self-service isn't about getting rid of your support teams, but rather, it’s about empowering them to focus on what matters most. Automate the most common, low-value questions (like "why was my payment declined?") and built clear, in-app flows to help customers find the answers they needed, fast. This allows your support teams to focus on fraud investigations, escalations, and other complex issues.

3. Embed fraud and operations into your product squads: in a world where fraud is an ever growing threat to customers, if not managed and mitigated to the highest levels, it is the single biggest threat to trust. By embedding fraud and operations specialists into your product teams, you can build security into your product from the ground up, creating a safer and more seamless experience for our customers.

4. Close the loop with your customers: when you act on customer feedback, make sure you let them know. If you roll out clearer decline messaging based on insights from the support team, tell the customers. This proactive and deliberate communication helps to build trust and shows your customers that we were listening.

5. Measure what matters: traditional support metrics like "average handle time" and "ticket closure rates" don't tell the whole story. Instead, focus on metrics like "percentage of self service" and "first-contact resolution for complex issues," which are a better measure of customer confidence.

The bottom line

In fintech, you're not just selling a product, you're selling trust. By making customer support a core part of your product strategy, you can build a business that's not just scalable, but also resilient, customer-centric, and built to last.

About the Author – Michael Zarif is head of product (Americas and global tax) at Xero and a former product head at Afterpay