07/14/2022

Competition for customers within the Financial Services industry is intensifying. Attracting and keeping customers takes more than simply offering the products they want; it also requires you to provide an excellent customer experience that makes every interaction easy, seamless, and responsive. There are steps financial service institutions can take to develop a superior digital customer experience strategy:

1. Commit to a Customer-First Approach

Digital customer experience should be driven by a strategy that is centered on the customer’s needs, preferences, and expectations. Today’s customers want easy access, transparency, prompt response time, and real-time transactions; and they want them through their preferred interaction channels. Customer experience is the customer’s perception and the total impact of all their interactions with your business.  Exceptional customer experience is developed over the entire customer lifecycle and involves every touch point.

For financial institutions that provide B2B services, the customer experience strategy may offer a more “high-touch” process that includes direct interaction, sales support, onboarding, and detailed explanations of products and services. For B2C, a successful customer centric strategy must embrace the total digital experience including advertising, social media interactions, and a cohesive content experience.

2. Provide A Consistent Customer Experience

Customers expect consistent and reliable communication from their financial service institutions both online and offline. This is especially true when it comes to financial product, service, and fee information. While the world of finance is evolving quickly, your digital customer experience must remain consistent. Recent statistics suggest that average smartphone users have up to 80 apps on their phones, and engage with 9 apps per day. Customers have developed an expectation that their favorite app’s use, functionality, and navigation will remain consistent. Any radical or unanticipated change could disrupt the experience and lead to lower engagement.

From the outset, steps should be made to safeguard consistency across the customer experience:

  • Define customer journey maps for each customer group that capture behaviors throughout the entire process including identification, evaluation, buying decisions, and post-buy activities.
  • Form a strategy to engage customers across all touchpoints and pinpoint digital and physical channel preferences for each customer segment.
  • Align your internal employee processes with the customer experience to empower your staff to efficiently serve your customers.

While the world of finance is evolving quickly, your digital customer experience must remain consistent. Any radical or unanticipated change could disrupt the experience and lead to lower engagement.

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3. Personalize When Possible

One of the cornerstones of traditional financial institutions is personal high-touch interactions. In the digital environment, personalization must be reimagined. But what does a “personalized digital experience” really mean?

Ultimately, personalization means identifying the services or products that are relevant to customers based on your knowledge of them. In this data driven age, your high-touch interactions may be more limited, but your customer insights are magnified. Your digital customer experience tactics should use data to enhance your processes by delivering personalized content. For example, is the checking and savings account holder also using your institution’s issued credit card? If your customer has a mortgage product with your institution, do they pay through your bill pay service or auto bank draft? Personalized content should target specific customer segments that take into account the customer’s lifecycle and their value to your business. Offering great customers additional options benefits both parties.

4. Respond In Real Time

Rapid response is critical for keeping today’s customers. Best practices built around the goal of providing real time responses are essential:

  • Strive to resolve any issues within one interaction, whether that occurs with a single point of contact or through a concise series of steps.
  • Offer multiple conversation options including live chat, chat through mobile devices, voice chat, and video chat.
  • Implement 24/7 chatbots or digital assistants that can use AI or machine learning to respond to customer queries and automate repetitive support tasks.
  • Engage the same agent throughout a customer’s interaction to avoid handoffs.
  • Enable customers to direct their own experience through self-service options.
  • Introduce self-help options for internal staff to use during live engagement with customers.

 5. Train Employees On Your Digital Customer Experience Strategy

During the past few decades, strides have been made in leveraging technology and data to segment, analyze, and automate customer-facing processes. However, many firms fall into the trap of becoming over-dependent on automation to oversee and execute. When it comes to developing these processes, the secret of optimization still rests heavily on how well your customer experience team responds.

Once your processes are streamlined, customer experience training becomes imperative:

  • Train employees on your customer experience strategy, aiming to provide consistent information and interactions.
  • Define who your customers are and how to match them with the right set of products and services.
  • Focus on delivering a great first experience that addresses the customer’s needs, questions, and concerns with sincerity; avoid robotic or scripted conversations.
  • Offer continuous learning to fine tune your process and boost performance.

6. Listen To Customer Feedback

In an era of social media and review sites, customer feedback is plentiful. The biggest challenge is being able to collect, monitor, and track feedback, and use it to form actionable insights. Utilize best practices for VoC (Voice of Customer) programs:

  • Develop a plan for social listening to see what’s being said online, but don’t stop there. Consider all customer touchpoints — chat, email, phone calls — as sources of insight.
  • Avoid a primary focus on unhappy customers; much can be gained from satisfied customer feedback.
  • Close the loop with customers by responding. This demonstrates that you’re listening and their feedback is valued.
  • Automate processes for information collection and analysis. Your systems must be able to handle vast amounts of data and drive actionable insights for improvement.

Financial service customers have become empowered; customer experience is critical to success. Competition is fierce, and financial service institutions aren’t just competing amongst each other – they’re competing against technological powerhouses that are harnessing data to their advantage. With a personalized approach, financial service institutions can reduce friction in the customer journey and achieve enhanced customer loyalty and revenue growth.

At Sendero, we’ve helped a variety of companies redefine their customer journey, and have discovered the insights and best practices needed to improve the customer experience. Fill out the form below to connect with one of our consultants today.

By Tom Cartwright

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One of the cornerstones of traditional financial institutions is personal service — high-touch interactions from banks, branches, and physical locations. In the digital environment, personalization must be reimagined.

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