Why you need customer support in DeFi

Back when we launched DeFi Saver in 2019, we made customer support a priority from day one. That wasn’t very common at the time, and it’s a bit surprising that it still stands out today, given how many DeFi projects remain difficult to reach when users run into issues.

And as we’ve seen through all our years of supporting users through their hurdles, there is often no “one size fits all” answer to their problems (and it’s certainly not something you can just Google). This is why, more often than not, our support guys have to sit down and analyse every detail of your setup. As there are many legos that come together in DeFi, the culprit could be in the most minute of details.

So, in this post, we’ll explore why we’ve stayed true to this dedicated approach and show examples of some specific situations where a little empathy and consideration (paired with extensive ecosystem expertise) went a long way in solving the users' concerns.

Efficiently not solving the problem

Now, before we dive into our current approach, let’s take a look at an example of the opposite:

• A couple of months ago, Alex visited the ETHDenver conference, and planned to stop by New York for a couple of days, on her way back.

• However, a storm hit the US East Coast, and Alex’s flight from Denver to NYC got canceled.
• The next available booking wasn’t until three days later, so she had to extend her stay in Denver and immediately buy a new ticket for an additional $1000 in total. But no big deal; she’ll just contact the airline's customer support and see what her refund options are.
• However, there’s a small issue: she booked via a third-party app, so she had to message both parties simultaneously to see who could help her out.
• And this had quickly turned into a three-day ordeal, as she had been trapped in a loop where one AI bot would point to another’s policy, and the other would point back. There was little to no empathy for her specific situation, just a series of pre-written scripts that couldn’t account for the nuance of her canceled trip.

In the end, Alex’s issue was resolved by a very kind help desk lady at the airport. However, the point remains that the tool marketed for its efficiency, in situations like these, often has the opposite effect. What could have been resolved with a 5-minute chat with a live agent stretched into a 72-hour argument and provided no solution to a specific problem.

Specific solutions to specific problems

On our end, we have seen a great number of users encounter problems that are very specific to their use case. For example, one user reached out to us, as he had a GUNIV3DAIUSDC2 position that was liquidated.

Side note: And in case you are unfamiliar with GUNI, these vaults were introduced by the Gelato Network in 2021, as a handy tool for users to automate rebalancing of their Uniswap v3 positions. In other words, GUNI tokens represented wrapped Uniswap V3 positions, turning a complex, non-fungible position into an ERC-20 token that can be easily used as collateral.

At one point, these tokens were also utilised to make looped GUNI/DAI positions on MakerDAO (now Sky), prompting some users to earn up to 30% APY. Sadly, the project has since died down, and the interface itself is currently nonexistent.

Now, this user's position had been liquidated as part of Sky’s decision to offboard GUNI vaults, with no penalties for the end user. However, this meant that you could redeem GUNI, but that token no longer had any kind of DEX market or liquidity.  The only way out was to go to Etherscan and call the burn function, which would ultimately unwrap their GUNI tokens.

Understandably, this user was hesitant to do this and scared of making the wrong move, so to make it easier, our dev team integrated the burn function into the DFS frontend. This issue was resolved in less than 24 hours and ultimately helped many other GUNI holders retrieve their assets.

Another great example is when users have positions in protocols that have been deprecated, and they are no longer able to retrieve their funds. 

Considering that the Morpho-Aave Optimizer had been sunset, one user reached out to us for a solution. Our dev team quickly put online an older build of the DFS app, allowing users to withdraw their funds and close the position that otherwise would have stayed locked.

This goes to show that in DeFi, very few cases can account for a one-size-fits-all solution. Furthermore, addressing a specific issue is often time-sensitive. Markets move quickly, and the last thing you want is to stay stuck or improvise without any guidance and risk losing your capital, all because you had no one to ask for help.

Our way of support

Our support team currently consists of three hard-working guys, who you best know by the names: defi_milos, nikola_j, Lein.

So what better way to showcase what the support team does than to ask one of them? Here is what Milos had to say:

“Our approach is to also provide the user with as much insight as we can as to why the issue they faced occurred, and also provide them with some insight for future reference. Whether that's sending them links to relevant Knowledge Base articles, or just giving general advice on how they can set themselves up to avoid any hiccups in the future.

One thing that I truly love about our team is the passion we have for implementing changes to our app based on user feedback. It's one thing when someone reports a bug, and we fix it quickly (kudos to the amazing dev team), but we, at times, get cases where a user interacted with a deprecated protocol 3 or 4 years ago. They're locked out of their funds with no real alternative option.

In these situations, we actually find a quick solution to building a small tool, so they're no longer locked out of their funds.”

Milos also stressed that the workload of the support team is different during market crashes. That is when user support becomes a priority: 

“This entails constant back and forth with users on what the best course of action is for their position, or if they're encountering any hiccups when trying to execute a transaction. 

And this is especially true when markets turn volatile. One example is slippage - when you have high volatility, it's very difficult to execute market orders at lower slippage settings, which can present a hurdle for users. So a good chunk of the work is also figuring out what subtle factor is causing these hiccups, and giving users actionable steps on what they can do to make their position safer.”

Milos also explained that we do our part to predict the users' hardships in advance by implementing in-app improvements. And such was the case with our swap route optimisation. 

Before, DeFi Saver still searched through all supported aggregators (0x, 1inch, Odos, KyberSwap, Velora, and counting) to find the most optimal swap rate. However, we’ve noticed that in times of high market volatility, there is a noticeable rise in the number of failed txs, due to some aggregators not being quick enough to keep track of the available liquidity in different DEX pools.

We resolved this with an upgrade that now simulates the swap in case the route isn’t valid and automatically switches to the next best available route. All this while notifying you of possible price changes, thus giving you the choice to accept or decline.

You can read more about how we halved the number of failed txs at DFS in one of our previous blog posts.

Stay safe out there

Last but not least, we’d like to remind you that we prioritise your security above all else, as we have implemented vigorous filters to keep out malicious bots that enter the Discord chat. However, it doesn’t hurt to stay vigilant, so here are a few helpful reminders:

• Never leave the chat server. Our team will contact you through the public channel or private support tickets. They will never DM you first or guide you to a different website.
• A key visual indicator is the color of the username: only official team members have green usernames
• And most importantly: We will never EVER ask for your seed phrase. No technical issue requires us to know your private key to help you.

We hope this post was insightful, and if you wish to give our support team a shoutout or ask them about a certain issue you’ve encountered, feel free to drop by the DeFi Save Discord channel.

See you soon in the next post, and as always, stay safe out there!👋

Stay connected:

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💬: Official Discord

📢: Official Twitter/X