As the world sheltered indoors, customer activity transited online. Enterprise growth strategy – notably the Banks – hurriedly embraced digital customer experience. McKinsey reported how organizations were leapfrogging their digital journeys by four years, and new portfolios that could have stayed on shelves for years started to see accelerated releases.
Experience is everything, and for the Banking sector, the bias for action is more urgent and the penalty for inaction harsher. Because compared to other commodities, when it comes to managing money, speed, convenience, consistency, and a human touch offer instant opportunities of either creating delight or frustrate with oversight.
5 Trends for Transforming Digital CX in Banking
Digital-Human Platforms Tech (Emotional connection is the new customer satisfaction)
Banking growth agendas are tied to impactful and emotionally connected experiences customers crave with a real human being. A study found that 7 out of 10 emotionally connected customers spend twice with brands they’re loyal to, and this ’emotional capital’ can drive a 5% uplift in annual revenue. Challenging the boundaries of machine cognition, AI technology to craft hyper-realistic personalized experiences with real-time speech and behavior will mean bankers must develop deep expertise in use-cases, problem statements, and persona creation. While the game-changing results are early, present-day traction is seen in chatbots, co-browsing solutions, and personal finance management (PFM) solutions.
Automated onboarding is only the start (Every impression is the first impression)
The current-day electronic onboarding processes use automation to expedite the process so that the overall CX is measured in terms of speed and convenience. A great start but inevitably, the conversation shifts to ‘personalization’ – a growth lever that industry studies suggest can lead to annual revenue uplifts to 10%. In the second half of 2022, Fintechs will move from standard personalization (data analytics for targeted marketing and sales messaging) to hyper-personalization (using predictive analytics, AI, and ML to target individuals). The outcome of this “humanizing-digital” approach means banks will employ rich data insights to monitor and offer the latest solutions. Every impression will feel fresh to the customer.
CX teams at the heart of Banking operations (‘To gather,’ Together)
The science of CX in Banks grows phenomenally. The real-time nature of the business – gathering customer perceptions, pain points, and closing feedback loops needs diverse groups adept at business strategy, data, engineering, design, and marketing. To bring insights, learnings, and experiments and get their execution correct, A-list banks – JP Morgan Chase, TD Bank, Capital One, and PNC, to name a few – work through cross-functional CX teams. Built on multiple approaches and iterations, a bank’s dedicated CX team brings unique perspectives and is more likely to create a seamless and impactful omnichannel experience. If the discussion sways, the counter group pulls back the focus on what’s best for the customer.
The experience KPIs (shifting the measures and measuring the shifts)
Given the above trends – forging emotional connections and dedicated CX teams – it is obvious how the current banking metrics of sales, conversion, and the number of leads and prospects must evolve. What are the possible new KPIs? There is a host to choose from – user feedback, total active users, net promoter score, positive and negative comments on social media, app ratings on Google Play and the App Store, Customer lifetime value (CLV), retention, switch rates, and customer loyalty index. The reason is moving from a pure intellect approach to an approach that mixes intuition and emotion. A key CX trend for Banks (especially after the pandemic) is to include empathy and purpose in their brand messaging and overhaul its success parameters.
Looking Beyond the Cookie (first-party data is the first-priority data)
As third-party cookies disappear, organizations scramble to alter their customer identification and targeting processes. Banks are at an advantage. They have long collected and authenticated their digital traffic, which plays a prominent part in providing their financial services. Not so much reliant on third-party data, the leaders in the banking game are not only harvesting customer insight but also assigning high business value to all customer outreach activities. Case in point: Customers with incomplete loan applications take precedence over a routine product inquiry. As behavioral data can heavily predict buying behavior, the more Banks can bring audience affinities into their CX campaigns, the likelier they are to strengthen customer intimacy and consequently grow loyalty.
In sum, Financial services brands offer their customers very personal, impactful products and services – home and automotive loans, start-up capital – expect transformational CX strategies in the sector to evolve at a faster pace than others.
