Coconut’s Year in Review: Our Key Takeaways from 2020
By Coconut Software - Dec 18, 2020
It is safe to say that 2020 has certainly been a year like no other. Yet this year has truly been a reflection of our society’s resilience to shine despite the circumstances and our perseverance to come out stronger than we have before. As this year comes to a close, we would like to share how Coconut’s commitment to People, Passion, and Performance remained a priority.
People
The success Coconut faces today is without a doubt a testament to the hard work and passion of our dedicated team to support and provide for our customers. When the pandemic hit, we responded like most businesses did by going remote to keep our people safe and refocusing all our efforts on fast tracking new features like Phone & Video conferencing to support our customers.
Adapting to the times
In the beginning of the year we set an objective to double our growth before the end of 2020. When the pandemic hit, we pivoted towards remote working and built a new business model that would help us adapt ourselves to the changes in order to meet our set goals. Surprisingly, we found that going remote made communication even more transparent and increased collaboration and performance between our locations. As a result, 22% of our employees received promotions, we ended up doubling our growth, and successfully tripled our revenue in the last 15 months.
Staying proactive towards inclusivity
During the pandemic, the world also saw protests to rightfully fight for an inclusive and more just society. Coconut proudly stands in support of the Black Lives Movement, taking the initiative to start having conversations with our diverse staff, staying proactive by conducting Diversity and Inclusivity workshops, and reviewing and adjusting hiring and retention policies.
Giving back to the community
Each quarter we donated to a charitable cause, driven by the participation of our customers in our surveys and outreach. Thanks to everyone’s dedicated effort, we’ve proudly donated a total of $5000 to the Canadian Anti-Racism Network and the World Wildlife Fund. We intend on ramping up our charitable donations in 2021 as well as working with our employees to support their volunteer efforts in their communities.
Passion
Understandably, this year’s circumstances have forced banks and credit unions to rethink their customer engagement strategies. Our passion to elevate our customers using our deep domain expertise in the financial industry helped support our customers through these times going as far as to triple conversion rates, manage visitor traffic, and overall prioritize their customers’ experience through this pandemic.
Supporting the shift to the new appointment economy
We did not only provide resources and tools to support customers, but pivoted our product teams’ objectives to support our customers in adapting to the new appointment economy. Examples of the new features developed this year include Phone and Video Meeting add-on – allowing staff to engage with their customers anytime, anywhere, Online Queuing – enabling users to place themselves in the line without having to leave their car, and Phone Call Back Requests.
Developing great partnerships to build the solutions you want to see
The most recent of the exciting partnerships has been with Google as we introduce Google Reserve to the Candian financial institutions, allowing banks and credit union customers to directly book appointments with their Google searches. Another partnership developed this year is with Constellation as it promises to integrate our customers’ platforms to centralize functionality and optimize efficiencies. Our ever growing curiosity and passion to keep expanding and understanding our customers led us to partner with two top banks in America.
Connecting with our customers
Considering the pandemic eliminated the traditional means of interacting with customers through tradeshows and other in person events, we had to get creative with how we engaged our customers and the industry. This creativity led us to host interactive Wine and Tea Tasting events, webinars where we teamed up with WECU, case studies with clients like Interior Savings, collaboration with think tanks such as Forrester, The Financial Brand and Future Branches to build consumer studies to understand the changing environment of the appointment economy, and sponsoring different events including a Tech Talk with the American Banker Magazine Digital Banking summit.
Performance
At Coconut, we refuse to accept mediocrity of our product, our performance, and the results we deliver. We thrive on getting it done and getting it done right! We’ve had a great year, proven out by some awards and recognition we’re proud about.
Coconut’s Recognitions and Rewards of 2020
We were the runner up for the Future of Saas Product of The Year, selected from thousands of companies across North America to participate in the Google Accelerator program, we were on the Beta Kit list of Companies to Watch in Canada, and even Selected for the 2020 Women in Tech Silicon Valley Program. To us, it’s not about winning the awards, but how we win them which we do through our manifesto and values that hold us accountable for our actions.
Keeping the Momentum Going
This year may be almost over but we’re thrilled about the future. To keep the momentum going, Coconut plans to increase headcount by 23 people this coming year, with many positions actively recruiting now. We are looking for curious problem solvers that fit our culture and who understand that being a part of Coconut is about prioritizing People, Passion and Performance.
We want to take a moment to acknowledge everyone including our customers, board members, investors, employees and their families for being part of our journey this year. Without this strong support network, none of our successes would have been made possible. Thank you and here’s to 2021!
