Inside Binance's User-Focused Culture
Main Takeaways
Since Binance's inception, one thing has been constant: Our focus on you. What you – our users – wish to achieve, need help with, and, generally, what’s best for you.
Nowhere is it easier to see our commitment to serving users than looking at our customer service (CS). Not only the dedicated specialists, but our broader teams regularly commit time to customer service activities, including our executives who also undergo quarterly CS training sessions and actual modules.
Our SAFU fund, law enforcement training workshops, compliance efforts, and other initiatives also champion our core value and culture of being user-focused.
Learn how Binance's unwavering dedication to its users permeates the entire organization.
At the heart of Binance lies the core value of being laser-focused on our users. From the bottom of the organization to the very top, we all keep our community right at the center of what we do.
Part of this focus can be traced back to the ethos of blockchain, the technology that underpins Binance and the wider Web3 ecosystem. The crypto industry is rooted in its community unlike any other. The concepts and values of the blockchain are innately embedded in the industry's culture.
Here, we're talking about trust, security, and transparency that is baked into the underlying tech of blockchain which provides a framework for the industry to follow. These values are meant to put the power back in the hands of the individual, or in our case, the user. At Binance, we've incorporated these values into our products and services, and overall values.
“Users are at the core of everything we do – we don't exist without them.”
As a responsible leader in the crypto space, we have always strived to lead by example and set the standards, including the standards of how we as an industry approach serving our users.
Placing Priority on Customer Service Excellence
The high standards set for our leadership also act as an example for the rest of the Binance team. Our marketing, social, PR, regional, and business unit leads also play key roles in the customer support pipeline. From scouring Twitter for the latest issues to crafting emails and resolving ticket escalations, we all play a part at Binance in putting the user and their problems front and center.
There's no better way to determine your users' needs than through customer service activities. For this reason, it's not just our Customer Service team with boots on the ground – our executives and other team members take part as well.
Since March 2022, Binance leaders officially participate in quarterly CS training which covers products, processes and system training followed by hands-on CS support helping our users resolve their queries/issues.
Without this hands-on experience, maintaining the user-centricity at the core of Binance's work would be challenging. By interacting with and learning from customers and taking in their experiences, Binance's leadership better understands users’ wants and needs when it comes to Binance products. These insights help our executives make informed decisions that trickle down to the day-to-day work of all Binance employees.
Raising the Bar of Caring for Our Users
By implementing regular CS training for our executives, we've raised the bar and set new expectations for our user focus. Yet, the leadership’s emphasis on discovering user needs firsthand is not new: even in Binance's early days, co-founders CZ and Yi He used to spend several days a week responding to CS inquiries themselves.
Both CZ and Yi still spend a few hours daily handling CS issues to collect operational and product feedback, as well as the overall understanding of user sentiment and needs. In fact, Yi developed a concept over 17 years where everyone is part of customer service for successful businesses and is known in the community as our Chief Customer Officer, while CZ remains uniquely engaged with the community as CEO.
"Everyone at Binance is part of customer support, starting from day one. To truly help users and solve their issues, we need to speak and listen to them in an effective way. In our industry, there is no success without taking responsibility for the community. If it’s not meeting time, it’s community time, and we try to hear everyone’s voice as much as possible." – Yi He, Binance’s Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer.
Commitment to User Protection on Multiple Fronts
From the beginning, we prioritized protecting users by implementing industry-leading security measures and strict data privacy controls across the Binance ecosystem.
We work alongside industry partners, policymakers, and regulators to shape our robust compliance program and build a sustainable path forward for the blockchain industry in terms of policy and regulation.
“Regulatory compliance is central to Binance’s mission to advance the mass adoption of digital assets, ensure protections for users, and promote security for the industry.” – CZ, Binance’s CEO & Founder
Let's dive into other most significant user-focus initiatives at Binance to see how they best serve and protect all Binancians and the wider blockchain community.
SAFU Fund
Binance's Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) is an emergency fund established in July 2018 to protect users' funds in the event of extreme situations such as hacks. At its creation, Binance committed a percentage of its trading fees to grow the fund to a large enough level to safeguard user assets. SAFU was valued at $1 billion (USD) in January 2022. Since then, the fund is regularly topped up to maintain this level.
Responsible trading program
For Binance, being focused on users also means doing all we can to help them make responsible decisions. We’ve implemented various features and guidelines to support responsible trading and help our community learn about risks and how to manage them. This includes cooling-off periods for futures and margin trading and other advanced risk controls like price protection to protect users from potential market manipulation.
A responsible trader is one who is always in control of their decisions and accountable for their actions. It also involves recognizing when trading may not be suitable for you. To promote these components of a responsible mindset, we’ve dedicated ourselves to educating the Binancian community and implementing features that help users make informed decisions.
Compliance program
Binance's dedication to compliance is another pillar that supports our core value of being user-focused. Ensuring the highest level of compliant products and services give users the level of trust and safety they deserve. To achieve this goal, we maintain a comprehensive compliance program that helps ensure that we observe the applicable rules and regulations in every jurisdiction where we operate as well as globally.
Know Your Customer (KYC) processes
Binance is proud of its robust KYC system and the security it brings to users. Split across multiple tiers, each level allows for enacting specific restrictions and limitations depending on local regulations. By verifying our customers' identities, we ensure that users don't trade with banned entities and individuals and help stop malicious actors from cashing out ill-gotten funds.
Regulatory approvals
Binance has a duty to provide services and products that are compliant with existing laws and regulations. Acquiring the relevant licenses and registrations takes a great deal of cooperation with local regulators. By securing these approvals, we equip ourselves for delivering better and safer products to our users.
Tax Reporting Tool
As crypto tax obligations become increasingly clear across the globe, users require tools to help them navigate the tax filing process. To support our customers on this front, we created the Tax Reporting Tool to help Binance users track their taxable crypto activities. The feature allows Binancians to export their on-platform transaction history to third-party tax calculators for free.
Law enforcement support and training program
Protecting users and creating a culture that revolves around them requires more than just work from Binance. Law enforcement worldwide work diligently to keep crypto users safe, and we have an important role in helping provide investigative training to local and international authorities.
The Binance Investigations team leads our training program, powered by the world's foremost security experts and former law enforcement agents. Each day-long training program includes in-person workshops on the fundamental blockchain concepts and insight into the evolving legal and regulatory environment around digital assets. In 2022, Binance organized and participated in over 70 anti-cybercrime workshops for global investigators and cybercrime fighters.
By supporting law enforcement efforts, we help keep users and the ecosystem safe, make it more difficult for bad actors to operate, and also thwart criminal activity.
Our World Revolves Around Our Users
Our commitment to being user-focused sets Binance apart as a responsible leader in the blockchain industry. By incorporating the principles of trust, security, and transparency, we've empowered individual users and ensured their needs are met – in the most secure and compliant manner possible. So, no matter if we're ramping up customer service training, involving executives in resolving user queries, or engaging in compliance initiatives, our commitment to our users is plain to see.