Irina Sidoreac started at Multitude in 2018 as a Customer Service Specialist for the Czech market. After five years and several promotions, she is now the Customer Service Leader for four different markets: Czech Republic, Latvia, Romania, and Estonia. Her team is made up of 28 people. Irina has been based in Malta since 2018 and balances her career with family life, raising a one-year-old son.
What is my goal as a Customer Service Leader?
As the Customer Service Leader, my main goal is that our customers get needed support, CSAT and Net promoter scores are high, and my team is happy. It's kind of a short list; however, don't get tricked here.
Having initially our CS teams based in Malta, we were quite limited with hiring. For years, Customer Service teams have struggled to hire enough native speakers to cover all our needs. While establishing our Philippines Operations Office and integrating translation tools eased this challenge to some extent, the real breakthrough occurred when the Head of Customer Service posed a crucial question: "What if our agents could support not just one market, but multiple markets?"
This idea became a reality, and the introduction of shared English-speaking agents opened new doors of opportunity.
New opportunities bring with them new challenges
Creating a shared resource team came with its own set of complexities. It required an understanding of all three markets, streamlining processes and providing effective training and ongoing support.
I dedicated almost a year to standardizing customer service processes and procedures across the three markets (Estonia, Latvia and Czech Republic) I was responsible for at the time. I can give you one example of what this involved,
Standardization and scaling – the heart of any FinTech business
In one market, customers had to place a phone call to request support, while in another, they could utilize the live chat function, and in a third market, support requests were typically handled via email. My responsibility was to optimize utilizing our shared resources, making standardization across all markets a top priority. This standardization ensured consistency and empowered our customer service specialists to deliver a uniform level of service across all markets.
Within my team, I have incredibly talented individuals who were and are instrumental in making these changes happen. They are supporting our English-speaking colleagues and providing guidance every single day.
The biggest challenge in sharing resources was not overwhelming our team with very different procedures and processes that had little in common. We needed to ensure that each of our English speakers could help customers from other markets without any confusion and provide excellent customer service.
Our English-speaking Customer Service Specialists handle live channels and emails across three markets. This flexibility allows us to strategically allocate them to areas where demand is highest, which is just the start of our journey!
“At Multitude, we're revolutionising our service operations on a global scale to deliver a seamless, synchronized customer experience across all touchpoints. By harnessing the power of digital transformation, we've created a flexible workforce model that transcends language barriers. Thanks to advanced AI-powered translation tools, our customer service team excels in all the markets we serve, reducing the need for native speakers. Rather than building large, costly teams of hard-to-find native speakers, we're able to supplement them with talents from cost-effective and hiring-friendly locations. As a fintech company with innovations in our DNA, we've developed a scalable and cost-effective operation that delivers a consistently excellent customer experience on a global scale,” said Darko Popovic, Chief Operations Officer at Multitude Bank.
My team and I successfully achieved our goal because we care and listen. Being a Customer Service Leader is not only about leading service. The key here is also to lead people; at the end of the day, this is our daily interaction with each other. I love to see my team members grow; we go side to side, and if I grow, they grow. If they have a challenge, I have a challenge.
Being a leader is not about giving a task to people. Being a leader means jumping in when a team needs help. I let them rely on me; that is why I have no doubt I can rely on them!
The key to success is having customers happy, employees satisfied, and results achieved!
Multitude currently has 100 Customer Service Specialists based in Malta and the Philippines, working across 12 markets, supporting, and dealing with over 500, 000 contacts a year.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is intended for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to be, and should not be taken as, professional or financial advice.