Support

Difficult-to-navigate help sections; phone lines where it takes hours for an advisor to pick up; emails that go unanswered for several days. We all know what bad customer service looks like.

For crypto exchanges, customer support is arguably one of the most important elements to get right. These representatives are the public face of a trading platform, and they’re responsible for helping users when things go wrong.

Excellent exchanges often offer support in a variety of ways, enabling customers to get in touch via live chat, email or by phone. Internationally focused trading platforms also cater to users who may not speak English by supporting multiple languages. A 24/7 mentality gives these exchanges an upper hand on their rivals, too — a trader in Japan won’t be impressed if they can only speak to an advisor during U.S. business hours.

The approach taken to customer support should depend on the exchange’s target audience. A platform that’s intended to welcome people buying Bitcoin for the first time should provide friendly and accessible guides that walk users through the process step by step. The website itself also needs to be simply designed and easy to use — after all, an overly complicated user interface can result in some costly mistakes.

Meanwhile, an exchange offering cutting-edge tools for professionals needs to have a customer service team that knows what it’s talking about, ensuring it’ll be prepared for advanced queries from experienced traders.

Scalable Solutions’ Berger is clear on the things that exchanges get wrong:

Some fail to pay enough attention to their security measures and have a poor business model.
Others lack liquidity and trading pairs — offering limited or no fiat rails.
Other big no-nos include delivering inadequate customer support.

In some cases, an unpleasant user experience can also emerge because of high withdrawal fees, an inconvenient user interface and a lack of optimized mobile apps.
There are also exchanges that fail to distribute staking proceeds to users.

Jakovlev believes businesses need to have a presence on the channels that their customers use most. He said:

“You may argue that fees and trading competitions are also relevant to crypto traders, but I’d say good customer care and community engagement activities are more important.”

Smart Valor’s Feldmeier agrees that, when it comes to general, non-sensitive information, exchanges need to go where their audience is. She told Cointelegraph:

“If your audience primarily communicates by email, Telegram and Twitter for customer service, then use the channels they are most familiar and comfortable with. At Smart Valor, we also implement a chatbox on our website, so if investors have a question, we can answer their inquiry in real time.”

However, she warned that each channel of communication can have its risks, especially considering that some fraudsters often attempt to impersonate exchanges online:

“You have to be very precise with your audience about what kind of information is shared on each channel, otherwise you open yourself and your users up to fraudsters. For each channel you support, you need to be aware of the security issues and typical fraud patterns likely to show up to ensure you aren’t a hacker’s victim.”

Given how several major crypto exchanges had their official profiles hijacked during the recent high-profile Twitter scam, this is pertinent advice.

Support

BEST PRACTICE

HUGE NO-NO