Customer experience is all! But, how often does that really go any deeper than skin? “Customer experience” becomes CX, becomes UX, becomes little more than a sleek skin on a funky app or a self-consciously different card; portrait-oriented, acid-coloured and a slightly odd shape.
If you really care about the experience of the customer, you need to go beyond the transactional. Real customer experience has to be relationship-led.
That’s our belief at Centtrip. From the beginning, we set out to be different.
Centtrip is a fintech business – we do financial technology. But, when people hear “fintech”, they often think “consumer” and that’s not our market. We’re not B2C, we’re B2B. In fact, we’re really B2B2B.
Centtrip serves the needs of a particular client archetype in uniquely demanding, super-niche sectors. We build deep and lasting relationships. We seek to deeply understand both our world and the sectors we serve – whether that’s the arts and entertainment, film crew, road crew or the crews of the world’s largest superyachts.
And, that strategy has shaped our approach to owning the customer experience.
The Centtrip world
At Centtrip, our typical clients have, or have responsibility for, internationally-mobile teams and crews. They have unique needs; not just dollars today, rand tomorrow and Swiss Francs the day after, but the need for real-time, anywhere, anytime visibility and control over large, multi-currency balances and transactions. They require transparency and the ability to empower their people on the road (or the ocean).
That requires cutting-edge tech, of course, but it also needs a deep understanding of each sector, its language, its challenges and stresses.
“Centtrip’s understanding of the need to go above and beyond has been key. The Centtrip team understands how such situations come about and therefore they’re more responsive to them than a card provider that’s more used to just general business expenses.”
Gareth Jones, Independent Financial Controller and Production Accountant (Film and TV)
Our people
Our people are critical to our success. Online help doesn’t cut it when you’re dealing with complex, urgent problems half a world away. Clients want and expect a knowledgeable person, on the phone, understanding and resolving their issues.
If a yacht captain needs to fulfil a charter client’s unusual request, right now!, we need to respond and resolve the issue. If one of the ballet company’s leading dancers has her per diem card stolen, we need a solution right away.
“The whole Centtrip team is very knowledgeable and very, very pleasant. They can't do enough for you and they won't let you off the phone until you're happy. We also have an assigned service manager who is very responsive and resolves issues within minutes. That all helps us support our artists. The service ethic is clearly important to Centtrip. It’s important to us, too.”
Graham Watson, Head of Financial Accounts, Royal Opera House
Our client relationships become deeper through our immersion in their worlds, but also through the depth or our engagement. We go right through the organisation, often becoming an integrated part of a client’s business or finance operation.
Take, for example, a rock band on tour. Our client may be the management or accountancy firm that organised the tour and commissioned our services, but our contacts, necessarily, reach right through the touring party, from the tour manager, responsible for handling everything on the road, to the lighting or sound technician who’s just spotted strange transactions from yesterday’s city on his Centtrip card.
There’s a further dimension. B2B2B means more than the freelance lighting guy who’s part of the US leg of the world tour. It reflects the added responsibility and complexity that comes from being responsible for other people’s money.
The yacht charter company and its captains are managing their clients’ money, and relying on Centtrip to make that simpler and secure. The music accountant is managing its client-artists’ money to run the tour … and relying on Centtrip to make that simpler and secure.
A valued customer experience comes from understanding, empathy and building trust. It must go deeper than the app. Our operations team must reach further than the tech.
“I’m a big fan of Centtrip. When we provide management proposals now, we highlight the flexibility we can offer with quick account opening, individual cards on a very swift basis, the digital online access, and the high level of control you have over the account and all cards. Our management package now is industry leading and that’s down to Centtrip. Centtrip gives us a competitive edge.”
Rob Dolling, Director of Sales & Purchase, Management and New Construction, VERPEKA DOLLING
Our platform
The second ingredient in our approach is platform strategy.
We took the decision to be a platform player rather than a direct developer and provider of any single solution because that gives us ownership of (and accountability for) the customer relationship and experience.
We also own the insight that comes from seeing the entire breadth of clients’ needs, so we can choose best-in-class solutions that meet their unique, archetypal needs.
When we chose our card solution, we worked with our partners to define a multi-currency card with the highest transaction and balance limits in the industry – because that’s what our clients require. We looked at the needs of sometimes fluid, often internationally mobile teams, perhaps operating in less secure environments and we were the first to the market with the ability to instantly lock and unlock a card.
We can look at, say, film production budgets cascading down, or music royalties flowing across borders and design the best solution for speed, security, and value. We can define features like real-time, anytime transaction reporting that meets the common needs of an early-morning yacht captain or an after-gig tour manager.
Our platform strategy, coupled with secure APIs, also underpins agile growth. We can scale to meet demand and plug in the partners and solutions we need to enter new international markets or adjacent sectors. We have leveraged our expertise in superyachts to establish ourselves in private, charter aviation, just as we used our experience in music, to add film and television.
“Centtrip provides an all-in-one solution to problems I didn’t even realise I had. I would now insist on using Centtrip on every production. It’s been a game-changer.”
Gareth Jones, Independent Financial Controller and Production Accountant
Owning the experience makes the difference
So, customer experience is all. It’s vitally important, but it doesn’t come without a deep, authentic understanding of customers’ needs.
That doesn’t come cheap, but it builds longer lasting, deeper rooted client relationships that leads to greater lifetime value. That makes it a worthwhile investment for any business.
If you’d like to discuss how Centtrip can support your international operations, please get in touch.