A recent survey conducted by Gartner detected a significant difference in expectations regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence, especially in chatbots, in customer relations. While 60% of customer service leaders are under pressure to use technology in this role, 64% of customers said they prefer that companies do not do so. The study reveals a trend of returning, at least in part, to humanized service as has been happening at Edan Financial Group, a fintech that has just announced an average annual growth of 168.7% in its gross revenue over the past two years and the consolidation of services for small, medium, and large companies.
Edan's CEO, Eduardo Silva, explains that keeping the concept within the team that the client is the main investor of the fintech makes all the difference. "Since its founding four years ago, we have always maintained agility, digitalization, and humanization as the pillars of EDAN. In our view, technology helps to accelerate delivery with safety and efficiency, but we choose the humanized approach in supporting our clients because we aim to customize the solution as much as possible according to each one's needs, respecting individualities. After all, when a company decides to concentrate its cash flow with us, it is the same as investing in our business, our credibility, and our brand," he states.
The executive also states that the investment in humanized service has yielded significant results in another important metric, which is turnover. According to him, the customer churn rate of the fintech over the past 4 years remains below 1% until the first half of 2024, while the market average is 15%.
This result aligns with the conclusions presented by the Fintech Deep Dive Research, conducted by the Brazilian Fintechs Association (ABFintechs) and PwC Brazil. The study indicates that offering a differentiated experience for the customer has become the main problem that fintechs want to solve. In credit and payment fintechs, for example, customers face more difficulties when trying to resolve a problem. For the investment sector, the main barrier is obtaining advice or recommendations; for the insurance segment, canceling the product is what causes the most problems.
Regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence, the authors of the work indicate that less than a third of fintechs master the use of AI, despite the potential that this technology offers in terms of task automation, advanced data analysis, fraud detection and personalization of the customer experience.
According to Gartner's study, consumers' main concern about AI in customer service is that its use may make it even more difficult to reach a person to try to converse and find solutions to their needs. In this way, the consultancy advises that when adopting AI chatbots, companies should seriously consider including connecting the customer to a person at some point in the service journey.
Silva states that this is already a reality at Edan and therefore, despite all the technology offered, the products are customized according to the financial needs of the companies served, as each business has a different dynamic from the others. The fintech has just taken another important step: after a study on all the charges to clients, it decided to reevaluate the prices and reduced the fees charged, even eliminating some entirely.
“We are working hard to reduce fees for our customers. In some cases, we have achieved a 100% reduction, exempting the customer. This measure did not impact our margins. On the contrary, after adopting new technologies, improving internal controls and defining new partners, we were able to improve our margins and those of our customers. After all, if the customer is our main investor, the focus should be on constantly improving their margins and, therefore, increasing reciprocity, thus also increasing margins at EDAN.” he says when asked: “How many institutions have already contacted your company or you spontaneously to inform them that they will pay less? This is ESG in practice! The Company benefits from lower costs, EDAN benefits from more business and Society benefits from more jobs and more solid corporations.”
