Last week, we conducted one of our regular surveys through the Weekly Update. These quick questionnaires are important to us as customer feedback directly informs how we improve our products and services.
We run dozens of surveys per year, with topics ranging from how easy you find funding money into your account to how well we’re communicating. We get hundreds of responses, and thoroughly analyse the data to identify common themes we can build on. We also provide comment boxes throughout for you to put things in your own words. We assess these just as thoroughly, and take everything into account.
“How likely…”
For any product or service, one of the most telling pieces of feedback is how likely you be to recommend it to a family member or a colleague. Every month, we ask a cross section of our investors (and our borrowers, in a different survey) to answer this question, and ask them to elaborate on their response.
These answers combine to form our Net Promoter Score (NPS): a critical metric that allows us to measure how much confidence our customers have in our platform, and highlights areas they’d like to see development. In 2015 alone, more than 3,000 investors shared their thoughts and experiences with Zopa, which contributed towards how Zopa works today.
Acting on feedback
Here are just a few examples of developments we’ve made which incorporated your feedback:
Zopa Plus
Back in 2013, we introduced the Safeguard fund as a tax-efficient way to offset bad debt against earnings. Safeguard effectively buys bad debt (loans that have gone into default), and is funded by contributions from borrowers: when they make their repayments, a small portion goes into the fund.
One piece of feedback we kept hearing was around our product offering. Investors wanted an option without Safeguard coverage with a higher target return (as contributions to the fund wouldn’t be deducted from repayments). So when we came to redesign our investment offerings, this fed into development and became a big part of what is now Zopa Plus.
The platform limit and waiting list
Earlier this year, existing investors let us know that they weren’t happy with how long their money was waiting to be lent out, and asked if there was any way we could make the process quicker. We took two courses of action:
- First, we temporarily limited that amount investors could put into their Zopa accounts in order to clear the backlog of queued money.
- Then, we introduced our waiting list for new investors. This is a fairer system for everybody: existing investors enjoy shorter queue times, while new Zopa users are only invited to start investing when we are confident they won’t be waiting too long.
This allowed us to reduce queue times without lowering our credit risk standards.
Performance reporting
Another request many investors have made is for greater insight into how Plus is performing, so they could put their own portfolio’s performance into a wider context.
In March we published a blog on how Plus has performed over the last 12 months. We had a very positive response from investors and are looking into developing more content of this nature.
Have your say any time
Already this year, we’ve heard from 800 of you through surveys. And as we look ahead, your feedback is helping shape how our products will look in the future.
Please do keep sending us your feedback! You don’t have to wait for a survey: our Investor Services team are a phone call or email away (during business hours) and are happy to hear what ideas you have. You can also tweet us (@Zopa), or send us a message through Facebook.
Andrew Lawson is Chief Product Officer at Zopa