Trust is the cornerstone of any professional relationship, particularly when it comes to money. Blockchain.com proactively engages with customers to show it’s responsible and organised.

“Protecting customers against cyber threats is our responsibility. Other firms can’t respond to customers during an attack because they’re firefighting,” explained Dougherty. “Our great risk management framework means we can respond, no matter what.”

Finding the right partners is key when it comes to building trust. Salesforce has stringent policies to keep data secure whilst allowing Blockchain.com to get to know its customers. By consolidating multiple tools onto a central platform for sales and compliance, it created a single source of truth whilst reducing operational complexity and technical debt.

With 360-degree visibility, staff can make smarter decisions, have personalised conversations, and deliver high-value customers the white-glove service that they expect. Of course, the customer’s first interaction with Blockchain.com is the onboarding process, which brings us to our next point.

The complexity of onboarding means it’s often a slow process. Blockchain.com revamped it to balance meeting legal requirements – which vary between products and geographical regions – with automating as many steps as possible. What once took months now takes just days.

But what is it that makes onboarding so challenging?

Getting to know a customer is as much about determining the risks of working with them as about personalising services. Know Your Customer (KYC) is the process used to verify a customer’s identity.

High net worth individuals may also be classed as a Politically Exposed Person (PEP). Their political influence means they may have more opportunities to gain assets illegally and pose more risk to the business. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations stop criminals from disguising assets as legitimate income. Companies run PEP and AML checks for these customers.

Blockchain.com needs to gather even more information from B2B clients to learn all about the company and its decision makers. It also needs to comply with regional regulations depending on where customers operate and which financial products they use.

Before a customer can be onboarded, Blockchain.com needs to aggregate data and make sure it’s accurate. The compliance and risk team then approve or reject the application.

Onboarding data is usually shared over multiple emails, which is slow and inefficient. Blockchain.com was one step ahead with a digital form that customers submitted with their documents. However, the form was a catch-all for every type of customer, and if the applicant wasn’t ready to attach all their documents, they’d have to start the whole process again.

Blockchain.com built a portal using Experience Cloud and created an automated journey for every type of customer.

“Salesforce gives us a high degree of trust in the security of our data. Its robust security policies and penetration testing standards is an essential foundation for handling sensitive information,” said Dougherty.

When a sales rep qualifies a lead, they create an opportunity in Salesforce and new account on the portal. When the customer logs in, they can start a new application from their dashboard.

Guided workflows take them through the application process, which is tracked in Salesforce to give Blockchain.com full visibility. The dynamic matrix tailored for six personas means customers only answer relevant questions.

“Customers can compile information gradually and institutions can add multiple users to work together on their application,” said James Davies, Sales Lead at Blockchain.com. “It speeds up going from that initial conversation with a prospect to getting them trading and generating revenue.”

The company’s KYC provider integrates with Experience Cloud to simplify checks. Some steps are manual by design – for example, the compliance team carries out PEP screening, vetting, and research. But Salesforce makes it seamless by centralising data and standardising documents.

“The portal promotes consistency and keeps clients happy,” added Amanda Piccone, Senior Compliance Specialist at Blockchain.com. “They weren’t unhappy before, but now we can give them even more love.”

And it’s not just new customers who benefit, it also makes it easier to use multiple Blockchain.com products. As Benjamin Toh, Head of Compliance, confirmed: “Different products might be under different regional jurisdictions, but customers only need to meet those requirements once. Salesforce dynamically populates the right information during application reviews.”

Blockchain.com has a lean team operating across multiple time zones. Onboarding involves the compliance, risk, finance, and sales teams. To create greater transparency and improve collaboration, the company swapped emails for Slack.

The solution is integrated with Sales Cloud. Messages posted in Slack are automatically captured in the customer’s record in Salesforce. The sales team create new leads directly from Slack via an automated workflow.

“Slack helps us work effectively across departments. Everyone involved in an activity is automatically sent relevant reminders, notifications, or direct messages,” said Dougherty. “We make sure no one is overwhelmed with messages but that everyone can keep track of their work.”

The compliance team, for example, are notified of applications awaiting approval. The sales team is kept informed of the outcome and a task is assigned when they need to go back to the customer. Clear processes and automated workflows help new starters get up to speed quickly so they can start adding value faster.