With Salesforce, we can save time, money, and generate more revenue by onboarding more customers, faster. We’re accelerating the future of finance by making cryptocurrency more accessible.
Tim DoughertySenior Manager, Operations and Infrastructure, Blockchain.com
Cryptocurrency gives individuals and institutions more control over their finances, but it’s not without risks. Companies like Blockchain.com need to put customers through the proper onboarding processes to help reduce those risks for everyone involved.
Onboarding is one of the sector’s biggest pain points. It’s lengthy, complex, and involves multiple stakeholders. In our future of finance report, 47% of customers were willing to try a non-traditional financial services institution in exchange for quick setup, verification, and onboarding.
“The north star of crypto is financial freedom. The easier we can make life for customers, the faster crypto will be adopted. With Salesforce, we can save time, money, and generate more revenue by onboarding customers faster,” said Tim Dougherty, Senior Manager, Operations and Infrastructure at Blockchain.com.
Blockchain.com is one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges. Founded in 2011, it has adapted and thrived in a rapidly changing industry, including moving from resource-intensive ‘proof of work’ mining to the more sustainable ‘proof of stake’ validation model.
The company’s customer-first focus and smart investment in technology are core differentiators. As it strives towards Customer 360 and automates more processes with Salesforce Flow, here’s how it’s giving customers a better experience whilst reducing costs.
Trust is the cornerstone of any professional relationship, particularly when it comes to money. Blockchain.com proactively engages with customers to show it’s responsible and organised.
“Protecting customers against cyber threats is our responsibility. Other firms can’t respond to customers during an attack because they’re firefighting,” explained Dougherty. “Our great risk management framework means we can respond, no matter what.”
Finding the right partners is key when it comes to building trust. Salesforce has stringent policies to keep data secure whilst allowing Blockchain.com to get to know its customers. By consolidating multiple tools onto a central platform for sales and compliance, it created a single source of truth whilst reducing operational complexity and technical debt.
With 360-degree visibility, staff can make smarter decisions, have personalised conversations, and deliver high-value customers the white-glove service that they expect. Of course, the customer’s first interaction with Blockchain.com is the onboarding process, which brings us to our next point.
The complexity of onboarding means it’s often a slow process. Blockchain.com revamped it to balance meeting legal requirements – which vary between products and geographical regions – with automating as many steps as possible. What once took months now takes just days.
But what is it that makes onboarding so challenging?
Getting to know a customer is as much about determining the risks of working with them as about personalising services. Know Your Customer (KYC) is the process used to verify a customer’s identity.
High net worth individuals may also be classed as a Politically Exposed Person (PEP). Their political influence means they may have more opportunities to gain assets illegally and pose more risk to the business. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations stop criminals from disguising assets as legitimate income. Companies run PEP and AML checks for these customers.
Blockchain.com needs to gather even more information from B2B clients to learn all about the company and its decision makers. It also needs to comply with regional regulations depending on where customers operate and which financial products they use.
Before a customer can be onboarded, Blockchain.com needs to aggregate data and make sure it’s accurate. The compliance and risk team then approve or reject the application.
Swapping catch-all forms for dynamic workflowsOnboarding data is usually shared over multiple emails, which is slow and inefficient. Blockchain.com was one step ahead with a digital form that customers submitted with their documents. However, the form was a catch-all for every type of customer, and if the applicant wasn’t ready to attach all their documents, they’d have to start the whole process again.
Blockchain.com built a portal using Experience Cloud and created an automated journey for every type of customer.
“Salesforce gives us a high degree of trust in the security of our data. Its robust security policies and penetration testing standards is an essential foundation for handling sensitive information,” said Dougherty.
A tailored, painless experienceWhen a sales rep qualifies a lead, they create an opportunity in Salesforce and new account on the portal. When the customer logs in, they can start a new application from their dashboard.
Guided workflows take them through the application process, which is tracked in Salesforce to give Blockchain.com full visibility. The dynamic matrix tailored for six personas means customers only answer relevant questions.
“Customers can compile information gradually and institutions can add multiple users to work together on their application,” said James Davies, Sales Lead at Blockchain.com. “It speeds up going from that initial conversation with a prospect to getting them trading and generating revenue.”
The company’s KYC provider integrates with Experience Cloud to simplify checks. Some steps are manual by design – for example, the compliance team carries out PEP screening, vetting, and research. But Salesforce makes it seamless by centralising data and standardising documents.
“The portal promotes consistency and keeps clients happy,” added Amanda Piccone, Senior Compliance Specialist at Blockchain.com. “They weren’t unhappy before, but now we can give them even more love.”
And it’s not just new customers who benefit, it also makes it easier to use multiple Blockchain.com products. As Benjamin Toh, Head of Compliance, confirmed: “Different products might be under different regional jurisdictions, but customers only need to meet those requirements once. Salesforce dynamically populates the right information during application reviews.”
Our onboarding portal speeds up how quickly we can go from an initial conversation with a prospect to getting that customer trading and generating revenue.
James DaviesSales Lead, Blockchain.com
Blockchain.com has a lean team operating across multiple time zones. Onboarding involves the compliance, risk, finance, and sales teams. To create greater transparency and improve collaboration, the company swapped emails for Slack.
The solution is integrated with Sales Cloud. Messages posted in Slack are automatically captured in the customer’s record in Salesforce. The sales team create new leads directly from Slack via an automated workflow.
“Slack helps us work effectively across departments. Everyone involved in an activity is automatically sent relevant reminders, notifications, or direct messages,” said Dougherty. “We make sure no one is overwhelmed with messages but that everyone can keep track of their work.”
The compliance team, for example, are notified of applications awaiting approval. The sales team is kept informed of the outcome and a task is assigned when they need to go back to the customer. Clear processes and automated workflows help new starters get up to speed quickly so they can start adding value faster.
Slack helps us collaborate effectively across multiple departments, which is vital for a global company with a lean team.
Tim DoughertySenior Manager, Operations and Infrastructure, Blockchain.com
Once onboarded, Blockchain.com tracks customer activity in Sales Cloud. If they stop trading, it generates a task to reach out and check if they need support. Blockchain.com provides 24/7 support across global trading teams, whilst a dedicated member of staff provides relationship management and acts as the face of Blockchain.com.
“Salesforce helps us be more productive and have better conversations with customers,” said Davies. “If it isn’t on Salesforce, it doesn’t exist, which means we’re not scrambling to find information.”
When Blockchain.com centralised six different systems on Salesforce, it opened a world of possibilities.
“Our environment was a mess of data points and systems that didn’t talk to each other. We were logging into six separate accounts to collect data,” explained Dougherty. “We rolled out Tableau and embedded dashboards directly in Salesforce.”
Tableau allows Blockchain.com to visualise data from both snapshots and in real time. Staff use Trailhead to learn to run reports with custom filters or groupings. They use dashboards to track trends by product or customer and view performance metrics.
“We have a weekly sales call and use Tableau to see opportunities by week or month. We track how many have closed and look at where to spend more time,” revealed Davies.
Meanwhile the compliance team can track application status and pull reports to help assign tasks and ensure work is fairly distributed.
“We can see backlogs, how many applications have been submitted, and their status,” Toh explained. “Real-time data means we know what’s happening on a daily basis. That helps get responses to clients within 24 hours, which gives us a competitive edge.”
As Blockchain.com onboards more clients, it’s tracking the impact on revenue generation. That’s not just good for business, it also makes the company more appealing to investors.
Blockchain.com has automated 90% of processes with Salesforce Flow. The result? Greater efficiency, lower costs, and more intelligent insights. Not to mention an industry-leading onboarding process that’s faster and smoother for customers.
“Salesforce helps us do more with less,” said Piccone. “Now that we’ve seen what’s possible, we’re going to keep refining processes based on staff feedback. We’ve come a long way in a short period of time. For a lean team like us, it’s transformational.”
Salesforce helps us do more with less. It’s easy to use and we have everything in one place to give our customers a great experience.
Amanda PicconeSenior Compliance Specialist, Blockchain.com
