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Wealthfront’s Biggest Weapon During a Pandemic

Wealthfront’s Biggest Weapon During a Pandemic

Wealthfront has been around the proverbial fintech block a few times. The San Francisco-based wealthtech company launched near the dawn of fintech under the name KaChing in 2008 and demoed its investment platform at the second-ever Finovate conference in 2009.

Given its time in the space, Wealthfront is well-positioned during this pandemic. The legacy fintech benefits from a strong customer base, name recognition, and profitability. So when the pandemic hit and many firms were struggling with customer service or the transition of working from home, Wealthfront didn’t miss a beat.

Its secret weapon? Scalability. As Wealthfront’s client base has grown to almost 400,000 users, the company has relied on automation to ensure a high-quality customer experience. “Automation has been a key product principle at Wealthfront from day one,” said Wealthfront Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Dan Carroll in a blog post. “If we can’t automate a service, we won’t build it. When a client needs to email or call us, we consider that a failure in our product and work to build an automated solution.”

Instead of customer service representatives, Wealthfront refers to its team members as Product Specialists. The 12-person team is comprised of licensed financial advisors who are each responsible for fielding client questions and tracking and relaying customer feedback to the company’s product development team. Using these techniques, Wealthfront has been able to scale to 30,000 clients per specialist.

And while some banks were closing down call centers and struggling with customer hold times ranging from 30 minutes to three hours, Wealthfront’s team of 12 Product Specialists weren’t overburdened. To get ahead of the projected spike in client inquiries, the team moved to individual remote work settings and composed a list of questions they anticipated from customers. With the help of the company’s content team, the specialists deployed in-app pop-ups that offered answers to potential questions and provided advice to help clients navigate volatile markets and the CARES Act.

So what’s next for Wealthfront? “While banks grapple with something as basic as streamlining customer service, we’re working on the future of financial services — something we call Self-Driving Money,” Carroll said. The new product will automate users’ recurring transactions including billpay, savings, and goals. “Our ultimate vision is to optimize your money across spending, savings, and investments, putting it all to work effortlessly.”