The most outstanding

  • Like ground crew and airport staff, Binance's largest department works behind the scenes to help millions of users around the world enjoy a seamless cryptocurrency adventure.

  • As the first point of contact, the Binance Customer Support team plays an indispensable role in putting Binance's user-centric ethos into practice.

  • However, in its beginnings Binance did not have customer service as advanced as today, but rather the team has experienced a long process of growth and evolution to get to where they are today.

Statistically, around 1% of the world's population has interacted with Binance customer support at least once. For example, the customer service team is responsible for registering accounts, recovering funds deposited in error, and countless other routine situations. As the first point of contact for our users, Binance's customer service department is indispensable in translating our user-oriented philosophy into real life.

If Binance's engineering team can be considered the mechanics who make sure the plane engine runs perfectly at all times, the customer support team would be made up of the ground crew and airport staff. Serving millions of users around the world, they ensure that each “passenger” reaches their crypto destination quickly and safely. Because they primarily work behind the scenes, their presence often goes unnoticed, but it is invaluable when people need help.

An underlying principle

The customer support team is Binance's largest department, made up of people who handle immediate user queries, training, quality assurance, and token recovery, to name just a few of its functions.

The community spirit of the cryptocurrency industry and Binance's user-centric ethos give the customer support team a prominent voice within the company. It's common to see team members engaging with other departments during public meetings or town halls, primarily focused on aligning user needs with business priorities.

The underlying principle is clear: the needs of users must transcend and come before any internal rank or departmental division of Binance.

A difficult start

In its early days, Binance did not have as advanced customer service as it does today, and as an ambitious startup, it served a smaller user base. There were no automated tools, consolidated procedures or information archives that we have today: everything was done manually. Users typically received help after submitting tickets or emails, and all customer service agents had to manually take note of each request and deal with all kinds of issues. Because they didn't have specialized internal resources or processes, they often had to ask internally to find the right information.

Things really started to take off in late 2017. In just six months since its launch, Binance became the largest cryptocurrency trading platform by trading volume. Consequently, the capacity of the customer service team that existed at that time could barely cope with this explosive growth. Mindy, a customer service veteran, recalls, “Even with all of us working around the clock, we were overwhelmed. “Sometimes the queue at the customer service system lasted for hours.”

In January 2018, Binance had to temporarily stop adding new users due to high volume of signups and rapidly increasing demand. Every time new account registrations were allowed again, new users flocked, so the question of when Binance would open registrations again became a hot topic in the cryptocurrency community.

System pressures

At the end of 2020, the market was quickly recovering after a period of lower activity. The resulting spikes in traffic placed significant strain on Binance's internal systems, including those that support our customer support efforts. It then became apparent that the third-party CRM system Binance was using at the time could not keep up with the exponential increase in online queries. As a result, the customer service team faced harsh criticism both internally and externally.

While customer service agents are the first point of contact and provide crucial help, they also bear the brunt of frustrations, even when the issues have nothing to do with them personally.

Faced with this increasing pressure, the technical and customer support team organized an internal training session and a live question session to help the community better understand the problems they were facing and the optimal ways to solve them.

Coping with turbulence

As Binance's user base continued to grow rapidly, the pressure continued to mount, both internally and externally. Between late 2020 and mid-2021, many customer service agents resigned or requested internal transfers due to the pressure and emotional stress of their work.

To help overcome these challenges, in 2021 Binance co-founder Yi He temporarily took charge of the customer service department directly, reviewing its organizational structure and allocating resources from other departments. The human resources team was instructed to contact former employees, while those continuing to work at Binance were given the opportunity to express their concerns directly to management and top performers were rewarded. Thanks to these measures, the turnover rate of the customer service team began to decrease significantly.

In the midst of all these challenges, every member of the team was carrying an enormous burden. After identifying the most pressing issues, Binance joined forces to solve them and lay the foundation for the robust systems and frameworks we have today.

AI, humans and systems

Currently, Binance's customer service department is available in 17 languages ​​and covers dozens of business sectors. Frontline customer service teams are further divided into multiple subgroups based on different products, resulting in more standardized processes and a comprehensive global service system.

Supported by internal tools and database, including a knowledge base, training system and testing center, it provides a structured process for all customer service agents, from training new members to daily work queries. This system significantly improves efficiency, as it forms a team capable of supporting tens of millions of users around the world.

Proof of this improved systematization is the implementation of self-service tools. By clicking the chat button, in the self-service toolbar users can find options to reset accounts, complete identity verification procedures, reset withdrawals, and much more. Another improvement has been the introduction of AI bots, which help alleviate many pressures and allow customer service agents to handle more complex and specialized cases.

Today, most user requests are handled within a minute and resolved in the first chat with customer service, which is a significant improvement over the early days when users could wait hours to be attended to.

Empathy and connection

When users face problems that affect their finances, they still prefer to receive help from human agents; After all, AI cannot empathize with people's emotions.

Doris, a senior customer service agent, says the team understands this urgency and the need for human connection. Even if a complex case cannot be resolved quickly, a customer service agent will respond within seconds during the first interactions and let the user know that we are here to help.

In social interactions, much of the emotional nuance lies between the lines, and humans are still much better at understanding that context, giving holistic responses rather than responding to one-liners, and picking up on emotional needs to provide comfort.

However, people's needs are not only functional, but also emotional, and customer service agents must be very aware of these sensitivities. As Vincent, a senior customer service executive, points out: “Sometimes even the use of a single word in a conversation can determine whether the user feels they are being treated politely and taken seriously.”

The art of balance

Binance's customer support team sits right between the company and its users. Whether it's new product launches or adjustments to compliance policies, customer service agents are often the first to notice changes within the organization and their potential impact on users. The customer support team relays user and community feedback on products and marketing to the appropriate departments, allowing us to make improvements through a positive feedback loop.

Binance requires all managers to receive customer support training, which includes spending an entire day handling actual customer queries, followed by two to six hours in the customer support rotation each quarter. These responsibilities ensure that user feedback influences product design and business operations from the beginning.

Additionally, the customer service team also influences other departmental roles and responsibilities. For example, the anti-fraud team recently expressed gratitude to customer service agents, whose proactive collaboration has repeatedly prevented users from transferring funds to suspicious external entities.

Recovery of funds

Within the network of the customer service department there is a special team. Its mission is to manage issues related to user deposits not being entered, as well as identify the underlying reasons and determine if more user information is required. In 2022 and 2023, this team addressed nearly 400,000 appeals on missed deposits and recovered and refunded over $4.35 billion in digital assets to our users. Among them, unlisted token deposits were one of the most common issues.

These cases require extensive collaboration with the wallets and clearing teams, as well as other internal and external stakeholders, to investigate and resolve the issues. Since the beginning of these initiatives, Binance has expanded its support from 6 blockchain networks initially to 16 networks where assets can be recovered directly, as well as another 16 that require certain conditions for recovery.

In the blockchain space, especially in the beginning, there was sort of an unwritten rule that sending tokens to the wrong address meant losing those funds. Binance, one of the first players in the cryptocurrency world to advocate helping users recover their tokens, faced a lot of criticism for this and questions about the limits of its services. Still, we press on.

However, these types of initiatives can pose unexpected challenges. Melody, manager of the user appeals team, explains that the asset recovery process is very complex, consumes significant internal resources, and not all errors can be corrected. By establishing recovery fees, Binance attempts to balance protecting users' interests without encouraging dependency or the misconception that making a mistake when making a transfer has no consequences.

Some cases are more complex and require a lot of time and resources to resolve, which is why it is tremendously satisfying for the members of this specialized team to recover assets. As Melody points out: "These recovery initiatives are very important to the user, regardless of the amount." Pleasantly surprising those who thought their losses were irreversible is the most wonderful feeling in the world.

The right energy

If you were to sit down for lunch with one of the customer support team members and listen to them talk, it would be difficult to distinguish the different levels of the team: Binance's flat organizational style is very striking in its largest department.

More than one team member recognizes that, in the high-pressure environment of their daily work, it is crucial to have supportive, resilient and capable colleagues. A big reason they stay is because they enjoy the energy of the team. When the market is booming and users are active, the workload increases, putting immense pressure on the customer support team. Sometimes, an agent can be found tearfully venting to a superior. However, after processing their emotions, they pull themselves together and move on.

In Binance's early days, a veteran of the customer service team remembers calling executives in the middle of the night to help them resolve problems. Over time, as customer service systems and workflows improved significantly, the need to constantly “put out fires” diminished. Little by little, our customer service experts were able to reclaim their personal space and introduce reasonable workload management practices.

The faces behind the screen

Just as busy passengers often overlook airport staff, many cryptocurrency users may not realize that the customer service agent behind every conversation is a real person with their own difficulties, complexities and emotions. . It could be a father who has just returned from a bike ride in the park with his children, a young girl who loves folk music, or someone known among her friends for her love of a particular type of ice cream.

Aware of this reality, our customer service agents are not motivated by a perspective of direct recognition, but by the pride and joy of being the embodiment of Binance's user-centric culture and living it every day. Advising people throughout their journey into the world of cryptocurrencies and helping them overcome the problems and obstacles that stand in their way is one of the hardest jobs at Binance, but also the most rewarding.

Risk warning: Investment in crypto assets is not regulated, may not be suitable for retail investors and the entire amount invested may be lost. It is important to read and understand the risks of this investment, which are explained in detail at: www.binance.com/es/risk-warning