By Casper Sorensen, Vice President, Customer Experience
In my last blog post, I outlined Coinbase’s ongoing commitment to delivering a better customer experience. I understand how frustrating it is when our customers experience issues such as the inability to access their account or make transactions. Improving our customer support experience is a top priority. In the past few months, we have quadrupled our capacity across our support team. In addition, multiple teams across Coinbase are working on new technology and methods to resolve our customers’ most pressing issues.
To help provide more context, below we’ve outlined the most common types of support requests we receive and how we are addressing them.
1. Updating two-factor authentication for account recovery
Customer service requests around two-factor authentication processes are often the result of customers attempting to access an account from a new device, new phone number, or unregistered email address. When this happens, we send customers a request for two-factor authentication, which helps to confirm account ownership. To reduce this friction for users and keep the same levels of security, this month we’re introducing a few changes such as a new system that delivers two-factor authentication codes faster and even more reliably.
2. Improving our identity verification process
To streamline our identity verification process, we’re making several improvements to our workflows, especially on mobile. Many of you are “mobile first” and want the flexibility of using your phones for all transactions. So we’ve introduced a new way for you to quickly see and provide any missing identity or business information through the mobile app itself. For example, you can now easily upload a photo confirming your identity via our mobile app. We also send push notifications and emails requesting additional information when further verification is needed, so we can quickly restore accounts if needed.
3. Protecting our platform and customers from bad actors
To safeguard the security of your accounts and transactions, Coinbase declines certain transactions if we observe suspicious activity. For example, sometimes buys and deposits will be temporarily disabled if a user’s bank account is not yet recognized as a trusted payment source. But these protective steps can lead to false positives when our systems flag an issue that must be investigated but proves to be nothing. We are making changes to reduce those false positives, which will also reduce the number of cases that need to go through manual review, while still maintaining our security standards. In addition, we’ll soon introduce an accelerated process for unlocking customer accounts when we can rule out suspicious behavior.
4. Bridging traditional finance to help you get started in the cryptoeconomy
Most customers connect their Coinbase accounts to a checking account or debit card as a payment method. Because Coinbase operates as a bridge between the traditional financial system and the cryptoeconomy, our customers are still required to adhere to transaction timelines initiated by their traditional banks. For example, some banks require a 2–3 day waiting period when transferring certain sums of money. And, while Coinbase can’t always resolve these issues directly, we will provide more guidance on the source of the problem and explain how to resolve it with your financial institutions directly.
We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve the Coinbase experience. When issues arise, we’ll work with you to resolve them as quickly as possible. For support questions, please visit our support page.
Our Commitment to Our Customers was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.