26% fewer fee and rate inquiry calls. A three-point improvement in merchant NPS.
A newly formed Customer Experience team was responsible for improving service satisfaction across approximately one million small merchants.
The inbound service channel offered a rich source of evidence. The challenge was deciding where intervention could create the most value.
The opportunity
Call volume showed how often merchants needed help. Understanding what should change required connecting that volume to merchant circumstances, customer comments, and satisfaction drivers.
Treating every complaint or call type as equally important would have spread improvement efforts too widely.
What I saw and built
As Director of Customer Experience, I led the team in connecting service demand, merchant feedback, and Net Promoter Score findings into a prioritized improvement strategy.
We found that seven call types accounted for 80% of inbound volume. Merchants in their first year generated 17% of total calls, highlighting an opportunity for earlier education and clearer expectations.
Customer comments helped distinguish different causes of friction within the same call type: policy concerns, unclear explanations, employee interactions, and missing follow-up.
Those findings shaped a coordinated portfolio of digital-servicing improvements, communication, training, process changes, and earlier merchant engagement.
We also identified opportunities for more relevant treatment based on merchant circumstances.
What changed
Reported results included a 26% reduction in fee and rate inquiry call volume and a three-point increase in small-merchant NPS.
The organization gained a more precise way to decide where to intervene and what kind of change each issue required.
Customer feedback and operating data became inputs to an improvement agenda that connected service experience with business performance.
What this demonstrates
Customer interactions reveal where processes, policies, communication, and support are creating unnecessary friction.
Combining those signals helps leaders focus improvement efforts on specific conditions and evaluate whether the experience changes.
The results occurred across a broader portfolio of interventions. The evidence does not isolate the contribution of each action to the overall NPS improvement.