Approximately 1% of the world’s population may have interacted with Binance’s customer service team at least once.

The moment you decide to click and sign up for Binance, you embark on a journey that connects you to the cryptocurrency trading giant’s customer service department. Whether it is the KYC process for identity verification or consultation on various questions, you have become a part of this huge circulation.

If the Engineer team is regarded as The engine of an airplane, then Binance’s customer service team (CS) is more like the staff and ground staff in a busy international airport, serving millions of people around the world. Tens of millions of users ensure that every "passenger" reaches his or her destination safely and promptly. Their presence is often overlooked, but they can always be found when you seek help.

The Binance customer service team is the largest department of Binance. It is mainly divided into two parts: first-line and second-line. The first-line is customer service that communicates directly with users; the second-line business group includes production and research teams such as training, quality inspection, and self-service tools, as well as a dedicated helper. The user seeks out the recharge recovery group that sent the wrong coins.

Due to the grassroots characteristics of the cryptocurrency industry and the "user first" values ​​pursued by Binance, the customer service team has a greater say within Binance because it directly reflects user feedback and satisfaction. More than once, you can see CS department employees questioning other business departments in public groups or townhalls. The essence is about the trade-offs that occur when user demands are not completely consistent with the company's business priorities.

What it potentially conveys is: At Binance, if something is relevant and important to users, no internal hierarchy or division of labor should be an obstacle.

Starting from micro hour

In its early days, Binance did not have the complete customer service system it has today. It also lacked automated tools and mature processes, let alone a complete database. User needs are generally submitted by submitting work orders or sending emails. Each customer service specialist records manually and needs to cover all businesses. It is necessary to look for suitable colleagues internally to collect information and solve problems.

In addition to the English team, most front-line customer service staff speak the same language and live in the same time zone. The industry requires 24-hour coverage. Nowadays, a three-shift system is implemented. When there was a shortage of manpower, two shifts were implemented. I have experienced that except for sleeping and opening my eyes, all employees are working The process of working overtime.

The first wave of peaks began at the end of 2017, and it took Binance only 6 months to become the trading platform with the largest trading volume in the industry. Employees, including the customer service team, were caught off guard. At that time, it was the first bull market cycle after the establishment of Binance, with a large influx of new users. A customer service employee who joined early recalled, “Even if all our customer service staff were put online and worked 24 hours a day, we would not be able to take orders. The queues in the backend sometimes even lasted for hundreds of hours.”

In January 2018, in the face of continued growing user demand, Binance had to temporarily suspend the registration of new users. And every time registration is opened, a large number of new users pour in. "When will Binance open the registration gate?" once became a hot topic in the crypto community.

At the end of 2020, the market recovered rapidly after the bear market. The original system experienced several brief downtimes due to its inability to handle the surge in traffic. The community was scolding: "Binance has unplugged the network cable!" Customer service can only bite the bullet and look aside. Listen to customers' scoldings while handling customer complaints and claims.

Under pressure, a customer service member came to me angrily and said he wanted to hold a live AMA, and roped in his technical colleagues to be scolded by users together with the customer service staff. In order to let everyone better understand the technical complexity behind it, Binance conducted a systematic popular science explanation.

It was not only the trading system that was under pressure. At that time, Binance was still using the customer service system provided by traditional and old third-party suppliers, which was unable to adapt to the exponential growth in online order volume. In January 2021, the number of new work orders per day was 10,000, and the backlog of work orders was as high as more than 20,000. In April, the number of daily work orders climbed to 70,000, and the backlog continued to accumulate.

Troubled internally and externally. From the end of 2020 to the first half of 21, faced with a surge in user work orders and internal emotional pressure, a large number of customer service staff proposed to resign or transfer jobs at the same time.

The company's co-founder He Yi put down other departments and directly took over the customer service department, adjusted the organizational structure, coordinated resources among departments, reshaped the culture internally, instructed HR to conduct return visits to resigned employees, communicated one-on-one with current employees, and provided bonuses to outstanding customer service performance With additional bonuses, we also quickly recruited talents around the world, stabilizing the situation of high customer service turnover rate and shortage of manpower at that time.

It was difficult to pass every pass, and the pressure was on the shoulders of everyone at Binance, and this battle was won stumblingly.

AI, people and systems

Currently, Binance customer service supports 17 languages, serves more than 100 million users around the world, and covers more than 20 sectors. It has gradually established a more standardized process and a complete global customer service system. Frontline customer service has also refined the groupings according to different businesses. ,to raise efficiency.

One manifestation of systematization is the use of tools. By clicking the customer service chat button, users can find quick channels for account reset, KYC, reset withdrawal, etc. The introduction of AI Bot relieves a lot of pressure and frees up customer service specialists’ time to handle more complex cases. Currently, Binance user requests are answered by customer service within 1 minute, and the vast majority of requests are resolved during the first customer service conversation.

Supporting the smooth operation of the customer service system is the internal database - a collection of knowledge base, training materials and testing centers. From onboarding training to daily query information, there are procedures to follow, which greatly improves efficiency and becomes enough to handle tens of millions of users. Demand team. At the same time, the built-in one-click upgrade function allows users' problems to be directly escalated from customer service to various businesses and management, and even to the highest L10-CEO level.

Binance’s AI customer service system and tools are gradually improving, but the crypto industry is changing rapidly and is closely related to money. When users encounter real problems, they are usually more inclined to seek help from human customer service. AI cannot empathize, but humans can.

Many emotions exist in the darkness. People can better understand the context, such as providing overall solutions instead of responding to single sentences, and more keenly capture this emotional need and provide comfort.

Doris, a senior customer service member of the CS team’s contract team, said that she can understand the anxiety, so even if a user’s complex case cannot be answered within a quick time, Binance customer service will be there at 2-2 the first time they access the manual customer service. Quickly reply with at least one sentence within 3 seconds, "Let users know we are here."

More often than not, users’ demands are not just functional information acquisition, but also emotional. "Sometimes even the difference in the use of a word in a conversation can make the user feel whether he is being treated politely and seriously." said an executive of the CS team.

the art of balance

Many times, it’s not just yourself and the users you have to face.

An issue every company needs to face is how to achieve a delicate balance between sustainable growth and user satisfaction. Focusing too much on growth may impact user experience, while focusing solely on user satisfaction may inhibit growth.

The Binance CS team is located between Binance departments and users. Whether it is the promotion of new products or the adjustment of user policies in various regions, front-line customer service is the first group to feel the warmth of the water.

Such disagreements can sometimes create tension and encourage direct and transparent dialogue. At a Townhall last year, a team leader of the CS team asked eight long questions, and the heads of various C-level sections answered them on the spot. This series of questions received nearly 30 likes in the internal solicitation section.

But what happens more frequently is that the CS team brings feedback from users and the community on the product and market, forming a positive flow.

Natural differences cannot be eliminated and are being bridged. Binance requires all new middle and senior managers to undergo customer service training. After passing the training and assessment, they will spend a day off work to work as front-line customer service to connect with real customers and deal with their problems. After that, they will spend 2-6 hours every quarter. I went to CS rotation every hour. In this way, feedback from the user perspective affects product and strategic thinking.

The CS team also helps other teams. For example, the anti-fraud team once came to thank the customer service specialists. With their communication and persuasion to users, they have successfully prevented users from transferring money from the platform to fraud gangs many times.

special teams

There is a special team in the Binance customer service system with about ten members. They have a special mission - to deal with the problem of users' recharge not arriving, including finding the reasons and determining the user information.

In 2022 and 23, Binance assisted users in retrieving and restoring more than $4.35 billion worth of tokens. In 2023 alone, this team handled more than 170,000 cases of recharges not arriving, including more than 40,000 cases of wrong currency. One of the most frequent situations is: users recharged currencies that were not listed on Binance. .

This work requires collaboration with multiple parties such as wallets, clearing, and security. Binance only supported six networks in the early days, but now it has increased to support 16 block networks for direct retrieval, and 16 networks can be retrieved under certain conditions.

In the blockchain world, there was once a rule that if you enter the wrong address, the coins will be lost. As the first mainstream crypto trading platform to help users find coins, Binance has been questioned about boundary issues - which issues can be managed and which cannot. The boundaries between these are often difficult to generalize.

Team leader Melody admitted that the process of retrieving assets is much more complicated than everyone imagined. It requires a lot of internal development resources, manpower and time, and not all errors can be corrected. When Binance determines the retrieval fee, it has been trying to find a balance point, which not only protects the interests of users, but also achieves educational purposes and prevents users from becoming dependent and mistakenly thinking that there is no risk or cost in wrong transfers.

However, the team will also be flexible depending on the situation. If the user is more sensitive to handling fees, or the transfer amount is small and is not in a hurry to retrieve it, the user will be advised to wait for a while to see if Binance will support the relevant network in the future, so as to avoid the burden of retrieving these funds now. The cost of tokens.

Although the cases are often more complex and labor-intensive, they still feel a sense of accomplishment for each successful recovery of user assets. "In our opinion, every amount of money, no matter how big or small, may be very important to the user." - The most wonderful emotion in the world is a false alarm, they are for those who thought the loss was irreparable Bring surprises.

psychological energy

It’s hard to use one or two words to try to sum up the temperament of the CS team. Generally speaking, their cheerfulness, resilience, and relaxation are outstanding. If you sit with them eating together and listening to them chat, you will be hard-pressed to find out. Some are management and some are grassroots employees. This is also consistent with Binance’s flat organizational structure.

More than one customer service specialist said that in the high-pressure environment of daily work, personal emotions will be consumed quickly, which makes it particularly important to have bosses and colleagues who are emotionally stable and have outstanding business capabilities.

When the market hits, users go wild, but business volume also surges, putting pressure on customer service. Sometimes, customer service specialists sit on the steps with runny noses and tears and complain to their superiors. Once you've dealt with your emotions, go back to work.

An employee who joined the Binance customer service team in the early days recalled that at the beginning, when faced with problems that could not be solved, they would even call the company’s senior management late at night for help. As time goes by, the management system and work processes are gradually improved, and everyone no longer needs to "put out fires" frequently, and everyone gradually regains their own living space.

Just as passengers passing by in a hurry will not notice the presence of staff in the airport, most people may not realize that the customer service staff hidden behind every conversation are also concrete and real people in real life. They may be a father who rides a bicycle with his two children in the park, an artistic young woman who loves folk songs, or a little girl who loves ice cream in the eyes of friends.

At a recent small party, more than a dozen people from the customer service team went to sing. One boy did a funny dance, and everyone cheered and jumped. Some people recalled that when Binance was still young and there was an annual meeting, He won 3 BNBs with this performance, which was a rare moment in the spotlight. At that time, no one expected that Binance would become so big. Just like that, silently, we accompany users to solve problems one by one, and spend a seemingly thrilling and ordinary day.

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