Bluevine is a California–based fintech company that provides online business banking and financing solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. Bluevine, one of the fintech companies, has offered simple business banking solutions to small businesses across California and the United States of America (USA) (Wewege et al., 2020). I have an acquaintance from Bluevine company who has influenced the knowledge I have about the internal processes of the company. Currently, it is facing an issue with customer loan payments affecting customer satisfaction and relationships. This paper discusses the loan repayment issue contributed by Bluevine’s lack of a solid financial strategy to retain its customers.
The customer’s difficulty in making loan repayment affects Bluevine’s ability to offer loans to a new customer base, as the funds are tied up in the defaulted loans. The loan repayment issue also interferes with the internal processes of how loans are applied, processed, and issued. Some customers are forced to wait unusually long to process their loans, while others are denied as the company fears incurring more losses. The set of financial strategies is also affected, hindering how Bluevine provides its services to the clients. To retain customers, Bluevine must restructure and change its culture to address customer satisfaction and relationships, which are integral to the success of an organization (Otto et al., 2020).
Customer satisfaction is a crucial indicator of how well demands and solutions are coordinated and provided to exceed customer expectations. It can only be reached if the client and the provider have a positive working relationship. Good customer relationship defines customer retention, which dictates the viability of the company’s business in the market.
Bluevine is fighting financial loss during the recession due to loans not being paid back in full. The loan repayment issue is affecting the efficiency of loan provision and processing as the company is more focused on recovering their money from customers. The internal processes of evaluating and giving loans are being interfered with, and there is a need to re-engineer the process. If the company fails to find a strategy to help them get loan repayments without experiencing customer turnover, the customer satisfaction score will be affected, ruining the provider-customer relationship. The customers keep Bluevine in business, and if the company fails to manage healthy relationships, its downfall is imminent. It is said that customers are always right, and Blueline should address customers’ issues beforehand.
Revising its financial strategy is a realistic and enforceable solution to the loan repayment issue. It needs to think of revising its repayment terms and propose extended repayment terms during the economic fall. The extended repayment terms will offer customers ample time to consolidate the little cash they get to make repayments as they struggle with economic fall. Such a step will ease the burden of penalties on past due repayments, which becomes a burden to the customers. The company also needs to utilize a loyalty marketing strategy to gain a competitive advantage during challenging economic times, which can assist in widening its customer base and expanding its business.
Lastly, the loan payment issue is traced back to the structure and culture of the organization. The extended loan repayment terms and loyalty marketing strategies are only enforceable if the structure culture of the organization supports the changes. Bluevine, to sustain its business operations, needs a good understanding of its target market and consideration of every aspect of the economic environment before formulating and developing any new policies.
References
Otto, A. S., Szymanski, D. M., & Varadarajan, R. (2020). Customer satisfaction and firm performance: insights from over a quarter century of empirical research. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(3), 543-564.
Wewege, L., Lee, J., & Thomsett, M. C. (2020). Disruptions and Digital Banking Trends. Journal of Applied Finance and Banking, 10(6), 15-56.