Letter from Sarah Mortimer, Senior Customer Success Manager

It’s been a challenging two years, and as we enter the new financial year here at Nivo, the outlook is looking considerably brighter. We’re finally seeing more of our customers and prospects in person, our internal team is growing, the Nivo customer family is growing, and we’re ready to dive into a new year of innovation! 🙌  

Our CFO, Rebecca Birt, recently led an exercise to review and refresh our company values. I won’t steal her thunder by revealing all, however, I am proud to admit that in each of the team sessions she did, the importance of our customers’ voices, and ensuring that we do right by the customer was a clear priority.

We truly believe here at Nivo that if we help our customers achieve their goals, then we will achieve ours. As a result, over the next three months, I'll be looking to conduct interviews of customers to truly understand what is working and what isn’t. The outcome of these interviews will be to make a list of the top 10 product needs and problems to solve, then I'll work with our product team to prioritise and address them. If you would like to be interviewed, please reply to this email and I will reach out to set up a time.  

Other initiatives we’re focusing on for FYQ1:

• Lead Sigma-based workshops to identify where waste occurs in their process, form a plan to address it, and set measurable targets for what could be achieved in the first months with Nivo.
• Launching Nivo business-to-business messaging.
• Increasing the number of Nivo in-person and virtual events (round-tables, lunch & learns, best practice training, specific use case workshops, etc). If you have any ideas, please let me know.
• Build a greater community of customer feedback.

Product Updates:

• We'll be posting monthly product updates on our Zendesk pages.
• Customise the default SMS invite message. More details here.
• Coming Soon: Checklists for customers in the mobile app.
• Coming Soon: Custom Web Widgets to allow you to embed other services.

Looking at wider themes, there are two trends that seem to be coming up more and more when I speak to customers:

1. Embedded/integrated solutions
2. Open banking

The pandemic has triggered a digital renaissance, if somewhat by force. Businesses, including financial services, had to transform their digital offerings essentially overnight to continue to deliver services to their customers.

However perhaps, as a result, IT and systems teams at organisations across all industries, are managing a higher number of digital systems. Similarly, as a result of the introduction of multiple tools, it can fragment the customer experience. This could lead to the trend of integrating or embedding systems into a more cohesive system. Like anything in history, a pendulum swings and there are extremes on other sides.

Whilst it may be tempting to try and consolidate everything into a single system, does the tangible return on investment from that consolidation actually offset the required ongoing maintenance to ensure all components work together as one?

Is it better to choose the right tools for the best customer experience and ensure the processes and structure are in place to support the teams to give the best possible experience to your clients? The truth is that the answer is going to be different for everyone.

In parallel to unprecedented digital transformation over the last two years, it has given rise to an increase in Open Banking. More and more banks are making transaction data available through application programme interfaces (APIs), which can then be used to help lenders make decisions on whether to lend to clients with greater accuracy.  

Apple’s recent acquisition of Credit Kudos is perhaps evidence of how the use of data in financial services is accelerating. The OBIE saw a 60% increase in new customers on Open Banking throughout 2021, with 1 million new regular active users are added every 6 months (source).

As Open Banking increases, and more competitors arrive in the space, I think we will also see more companies move away from just APIs to using machine learning (a key component of Credit Kudos), as well as artificial intelligence, and integration into the Internet of Things (IoT).

I’m a big believer in using data to make informed decisions, however, the breadth of data that companies will have access to through the continued rise in Open Banking (and other digital services in general), begs many questions about the increased regulation and governance needed to reduce the risk of exploitation of consumer’s data.

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