Strategic Listening Turns Customer Conversations Into Profitable Growth | PYMNTS.com (2025)

The most impactful insights often emerge not from boardrooms or whiteboards but from direct conversations with customers. For today’s financial services, payments and digital economy leaders, these customer exchanges offer a critical compass for strategy, innovation and relationship management. This quarter’s edition of PYMNTS’ eBook, “The Listening Economy: How Customer Conversations Are Transforming Financial Services,” gathers illuminating accounts from 14 top firms, including Coupa, Worldpay, Marqeta and FIS, highlighting how meaningful dialogue can lead to profound strategic shifts.

Across the collection of entries, a central theme emerges: the potency of genuinely listening to clients. Maria Prados of Worldpay encapsulates this succinctly, stressing the importance of “listening differently” — shifting from mere data collection to interpreting underlying concerns and market trends. Prados highlights a provocative scenario involving a luxury retailer initially hesitant about adopting QR-based payments like Alipay and WeChat Pay. Worldpay’s data-driven guidance proved transformative, resulting in double-digit conversion increases and enhanced customer engagement.

Coupa Chief Customer Officer John Frank extends this idea, emphasizing trust as the cornerstone of strategic partnerships. Frank argues compellingly that technology alone isn’t sufficient for competitive advantage; instead, long-term success springs from co-creating value through transparency and continuous collaboration. Similarly, Maverick Payments’ Maria Mejia underscores the effectiveness of the human touch, advocating for personal interactions that build lasting loyalty and drive growth — particularly in a world often dominated by automation.

The concept of turning customer conversations into actionable strategies is further explored by Mark Lashmar of ValidiFI. Lashmar describes a challenge faced by a lender grappling with risky accounts, a conversation that ultimately revealed significant blind spots in traditional verification processes. By responding swiftly with innovative behavioral insights, ValidiFI was able to help its client proactively manage risk and in the process transform their underwriting approach from reactive to predictive.

Meanwhile, Jon Gaskell from Ingo Payments offers one of the eBook’s most provocative perspectives: flipping payouts from a cost center into a revenue-generating opportunity. Embedded banking solutions, particularly issuing branded debit cards, offer firms a chance not just to mitigate costs but to actively generate interchange revenue. This forward-looking approach reframes a longstanding challenge into a profitable innovation.

Contributions from Marqeta’s Anat Hoida and Concora Credit’s Kari Lyncha further illustrate that the value of customer interactions lies not just in immediate problem-solving, but in anticipating needs and refining customer experiences. Both emphasize the critical role of frontline feedback and data analytics in shaping service delivery and strategic foresight.

Collectively, these insights form a compelling narrative: Successful companies are those that engage deeply, listen thoughtfully and act decisively. By exploring these critical interactions and sharing best practices, industry leaders in this eBook offer actionable advice to help others transform customer dialogues into stronger, more profitable relationships. In a rapidly evolving digital economy, those conversations have never been more valuable or more urgent.

Download the eBook here.