Trust is Everything: Why I no longer bank with Bunq
And what you can learn from this as a founder and business owner.
Bunq has some of the best digital banking features in the market. They are by far my favorite online bank. So why did I stop using them?
It turns out that customer trust really matters. A lot.
The Incident
A while ago, Bunq faced several high-profile fraud cases in the media, along with a serious outage that lasted a couple of hours.
In response to the fraud cases, Bunq invested significant time and effort defending their position, even pursuing legal action. The thing they missed, though, was that it actually doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong. What mattered, and what did the most damage to their reputation, was the tone with which they responded.
That, at least, was what put the nail in the coffin for me.
The Response
Regardless of their intention, their communication came across as arrogant, judgmental, and outward-focused. When something goes wrong, the last thing I want my bank to do is point fingers at others and downplay my concerns. What I want them to do is solve the problem, and quickly.
What they demonstrated in that moment, more than anything, was their unwillingness to help their customers. Instead, they channeled all their energy into arguing with the media.
Is that the kind of company I want safekeeping the bulk of my savings and investments? Even though I wasn’t personally impacted by the incidents, my answer was a clear no.
Even if their arguments were absolutely correct, their unwillingness to put themselves in the shoes of the customer and do whatever they could to solve the problem broke something really important in my perception of them. I realised that I no longer trusted them.
So I moved the bulk of my savings and investments somewhere else.
Lessons for Your Company
What can you learn from this for your own company?
First, while the customer isn't always right, and the media even less so, you will absolutely lose your customers if you break their trust, argue with them, or try to convince them that they're somehow wrong.
People vote with their wallets, and they will not do business with someone whom they don't think has their best interests at heart and who won't listen to them or try to solve their problem.
Second, you don't earn trust by arguing with people, pointing fingers, or explaining how they're wrong. Even if they are wrong.
You earn trust by taking responsibility, taking swift action, resolving the issue, being honest and self-reflective, and sharing what you've learned openly and proactively.
A Better Response
A far better response from Bunq could have been something like this:
While we work every day to ensure that we have some of the best security mechanisms in the industry, we realise that something has gone wrong here. Here’s what we’re doing about this right now:
We are reaching out directly to impacted customers to support them as best we can.
We are immediately reviewing how these incidents are happening and putting emergency mechanisms in place.
We are actively building an improved authorisation process, will keep you up to date, and will roll it out within the next few weeks.
We strive to be the best online bank. Period. While we believe that we are far ahead of other banks in this space, we can definitely improve, and we will.
We thank you for your trust in us - you can reach us directly here with any questions or concerns.
Wouldn’t that have been better?
The Bottom Line
Check your ego at the door, and earn your customers trust. Or risk losing them. It’s that simple.
I have no idea whether my money is safer somewhere else, but Bunq broke the trust that I had with them. And that’s hard to rebuild. Not impossible, but very difficult. I will need to see them respond to future incidents in a much more professional way to get some of that back.
As humans, we make our decisions emotionally, whether we like it or not. And trust, or it’s absence, is one of the most powerful emotions we have.