The power of a connected chat experience: Nice work Kustomer, Tide
This afternoon I got an email from one of my UK banks, Tide.
Tide is a specialist SME business bank account and I am deeply impressed with the simple it-just-works service that Tide has been offering me.
I have, in the past, been slightly frustrated with the rather limited maturity of the Conversational AI offering from Tide. I have high expectations, especially from a leading neobank, and I didn't find my initial experience that inspiring.
In terms of Conversational AI Maturity – and the index I've been developing – I'd put Tide right at Stage Zero.
This doesn't mean their offering is poor. Just, in terms of conversational orchestration, it certainly appeared highly immature.
And as I'm at pains to explain to many companies that I'm advising, sitting at Stage Zero (out of 5) in the Conversational AI Maturity framework doesn't mean all is lost. It's a continuum. It's a journey.
And even simple technology like live chat can, if used correctly, be an enormously powerful offering.
And it's this I'd like to highlight.
Tide is using Kustomer as its in-app messaging platform. It's tightly and beautifully integrated – and the Tide app's push notification system seamlessly notifies you of new messages. Plus, tapping on a notification launches a deep link into the app's Kustomer SDK/interface so that I was transported right to the persistent live chat.
It started with feedback
Earlier in the afternoon I got a standard 'how's it going' feedback email from Tide, like so:
The email was asking about my experience with the Tide Invoicing capability. I've been using it – and it's brilliant. So simple and easy.
I hit the number 10.
This took me to a Typeform:
I duly clicked 10.
Then came the 'how can we improve' question:
I typed my answer and hit Submit.
All is fine.
Then, maybe 20 minutes later I got a message notification from Tide...
Nice work Rado.
Look at this.
Immediate feedback from Rado at Tide.
I promptly stopped what I was doing and replied (my text in the blue background).
I really appreciated this direct feedback from Rado.
He went on to suggest that I might want to check out Tide's premium offering ("Tide Invoice Assistant"). I've been thinking about it, but now that he reached out I think I'll do it.
Not least because I wasn't quite aware that the feature I had asked for (in feedback) is effectively already available in the premium version.
So whilst I am a huge champion of Conversational AI capabilities in Financial Services and beyond, I also wanted to document this example of offering a really good customer experience by just connecting some dots.
Rado, I presume, was looking for customer feedback that was received as a result of the Tide mailer earlier today.
Then he looked me up and engaged me directly through the Tide in-app messaging system. I wonder if the Tide team had setup a Zapier style automation via Typeform? Whatever the backend processing, the net effect was I appreciated the outreach from Tide - responding to my feedback - and I also welcomed the suggestion that I could upgrade (and I think I will).
This is a great example of using the likes of Kustomer to deliver a superior thoroughly digital customer experience to me.
Nice work Team Tide and Team Kustomer.
If you're looking for more information on Kustomer, you might start with their CEO, Brad Birnbaum:
Or Chief Kustomer Officer, Lauren Gold:
And to find out more about Tide, reach out to their CEO, Dr Oliver Prill:
