How a Fintech Reduced Customer Churn Using Competitive Intelligence. A Case Study

by Octopus Intelligence Octopus Competitive Intelligence

How a Fintech reduced customer churn using Competitive Intelligence. A case study

Week by week, you will read the true stories created from our Competitive Intelligence work. You’ll meet the clients using our insight to create more business and better business. What did they know, what did they want to know? What did they learn, and what would you do in a similar situation? We show how a Fintech reduced customer churn using Competitive Intelligence. A case study.

You know how

You know how you are building a great SaaS platform. Investors are banging on your door to give you money for your development. Sign-ups are increasing daily. And maybe you could be the next unicorn out of Silicon Valley or Shoreditch? Move forward 18 months. Business is still good, and you have created something special.

But you feel things are starting to slow down a little. And competitors have come into your market offering something similar. At the same time, your sign-ups and sales are beginning to peak, and you see a worrying decline? The free trial conversations to paying customers ratio are reducing? And your investors are beginning to ask interesting questions.

A similar situation was happening to our client. A London and New York-based banking fintech. They have received significant funding over the last five years. And they were one of the first to enter the market. They made a lot of investors thrilled over a short space of time. Now the investors were sharpening their pencils. Asking more difficult questions.

They asked us to take a look at their competitors. To find out what they were doing and isolate their plans. And why users were signing up with them and not their excellent platform. Was it price? Was it customer service or particular features that their customers loved?

What we did was

After some persuasion, we reduced the first project down to five competitors (from 23). We defined what they really wanted to know into six or seven questions.

Questions associated with:

Workflow
Features and capabilities
Reporting
Pricing
Contracts
Number of subscribers
3rd party integrations
Future developments

What is Competitive Intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is the finding, sorting and critical analysis of information. To make sense of what’s happening and why. Predict what’s going to happen and give the options to help you control the outcome. Competitive intelligence offers certainty, competitive advantage, insight, growth & security.

Quickly, we understood that desk research was not going to give us any significant insight. So we approached their competitors to create a discussion. And get a demonstration of their platforms. After all, the best view of a customer-facing platform is from a customer’s eyes and the people who built it.

We created a plausible cover story. And then we approached their competitors to arrange platform demos. But not wanting to look too keen, the agreed date and times were changed once or twice. And in some cases, we got to the point where we were being sold to. We undertook five demonstrations of our client’s competitors SaaS platform offerings. Arranged follow-up calls, quotes and requested additional information. We asked for references, and in one case, we spoke to a number of their customers to get verbal endorsements. We negotiated prices, terms and defined the sign-up process.

This is what they got

Rather than waiting for our final report, we wanted to offer instant insight. So immediately told our client about anything they could act on straight away. To their delight, they received five recorded demonstrations of their competitor’s products. With all their questions answered.

The result was

The result was that they were stunned at the detail we could find. They could see why customers were moving to their competitors or staying with them. Also, they gained an understanding of what their competitors were going to do next. And in a couple of cases were given ideas of new product ideas to work on. We are delighted to learn that things are improving for our client. And they use Octopus Competitive Intelligence services on an ongoing basis.

What our client gained from knowing was an increase in growth of 30% real-time. They lead the market because they now understand how to differentiate their offer

Incidentally, our client had used an LA-based CI consultancy in the past. Rightly, an experience that made them sceptical about Competitive Intelligence. Mainly because the final report they received was disappointing. 80 or so screenshots of their competitor’s website.

Summary