Customer-centric companies — TransferWise

Stanislavs Beguns
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read

There are numerous benefits of customer focus at startups that I covered in my previous post, but it isn’t just for small gigs. Customer focus brings tremendous value to medium and large organisations as well.

TransferWise is a great example of that. The company with a rare and extremely fascinating culture provides fast and cheap international money transfers. Having worked there for over a year, I’ll cover how TransferWise implements customer focus and what are the outcomes of its approach.

Customer-centric autonomous teams

All teams are organised around specific customer problems and they work together to converge on a common path of “what’s best for customers”. Essentially, every decision is challenged by a “does this help our customers?” question. TransferWise’s passion for its customers is also represented with one of its core values Customers > Team > Ego, reminding all teams about what’s important. In fact, speaking to customers is so common that almost everyone does occasional customer support, including developers, lawyers, designers etc. Even board members were persuaded to help TransferWise customers.

Such engagement with customers helps teams see a bigger picture. It provides an opportunity to ask questions and validate ideas. From my personal experience, I can add that it’s also a lot of fun.

Furthermore, customer focus enables TransferWise to leverage something more important — autonomy. All teams at TransferWise are autonomous meaning that they don’t have managers or people telling them what to do. The company strongly believes that the best people to make decisions are the ones who are closest to customers. The closest people to customers are the teams, and so all teams are independently calling shots within their domains. It’s up to the team to figure out what’s important, what metrics should it track, what objectives should it reach and it all links back to what’s best for customers.

But what about the senior management (CEO, VPs etc.)? They are probably the furthest from customers, hence they aren’t the best people to make product decisions, and they mostly don’t. Instead, they develop teams and advise them as well as help them overcome challenges and facilitate collaboration.

Harsh Sinha (VP of Engineering) uncovers how such principles work in more detail.

Some numbers

Let’s take a look at measurable results of such approach.

  • High customer trust and satisfaction. TrustPilot reports 9.5 rating (out of 10) with almost 40k reviews.
  • Profitable (source).
  • High valuation. TransferWise has been reportedly valued at over $1bn.
  • Great work environment (glasdoor reviews).

Furthermore, I spent a year working as a viral growth engineer at TransferWise and it’s worth uncovering some details that aren’t directly measurable.

Competition

TransferWise has a lot of direct competitors, but I can’t remember that we ever worried about them. Always staying on top of what customers need and looking for new opportunities to create value inevitably leads to continuous innovation and adaptation. TransferWise is without a doubt a successful business, but it’s difficult to analytically compare it with the competitors because most significant metrics are kept private (by both TransferWise and its competitors). However, I personally don’t know a better strategy for competing and TransferWise executes it very naturally, without even trying.

Work environment

First of all, the work is very stimulating and develops incredibly smart people, especially their entrepreneurial skills. In fact, it feels like running your own startup (I’ve done two startups before joining). You channel most of your energy into figuring out what customers need, just like at an early-stage startup. Sometimes it means getting lost and not having any idea what to do tomorrow, which I’m sure a lot of founders can relate to. The difference is that at TransferWise you won’t fall off the cliff that easily due to the support and the resources that you get there.

Secondly, the work is very fulfilling. Employees not only understand why they do what they do, but they also see a direct impact of their work through communicating with customers. It’s quite pleasing to hear compliments from customers on the phone, and it’s very motivating to hear criticism.

Thirdly, there is also a lot of room for self-realization and creative freedom. Thinking of a new feature or a product? Show that customers need it and make it happen. Autonomous teams work great for people who need this kind of flexibility.

Closing thoughts

I am absolutely convinced that customer focus brings a lot of value to TransferWise. It creates a fulfilling work environment, helps the organisation to achieve outstanding results, helps to compete, and, most importantly, it helps to make people’s lives better. There a lot of tiny but critical factors to why such culture works at TransferWise, but it could be worth considering and even implementing some of its aspects into your organisation, regardless of the size.

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