Financial Service

In the first part of this blog series we discussed what customer experience means. To recap, customer experience is a lifetime journey across all touchpoints and communication channels. If your organization can provide excellent customer experience and meet your customer’s expectations, then you will see greater customer retention and growth for years to come.

So, what does that mean for your company? If you can provide an excellent customer experience, then this group is much more likely to share that positive experience AND remain loyal to your brand much more than previous generations.

Finally, according to a report by Microsoft, 63% of millennials begin their customer service interactions online. Making it essential for companies to have an easy, online method for customers to get help when they need it.

In order to deliver a positive experience, we believe it’s important for companies to provide their customers with a seamless, digital experience across various platforms and channels. In fact, NICE inContact reported that 93% of surveyed consumers want a seamless omnichannel experience, but a shocking 73% gave companies a poor rating on their ability to seamlessly switch between channels. This means that many companies are struggling to meet the demands of their customers – leading to unhappy customers and a negative impact on their bottom line.

So, how can you meet these demands and provide a positive experience? Start with the channels you provide to your customers. Many companies offer several ways for customers to contact them and have exchanges. How well do these channels really work together? Is it easy to switch from one to another – not just for the customer but for your employees too?

Finally, simply meeting today’s demands for a seamless digital experience is not enough. As customer expectations change and evolve, so will your customers’ experience. Your company must have the ability and flexibility to adapt to future requirements to keep that experience great, and customer retention high.

We’ve discussed what customer experience is, why it’s important, and how you can begin to address your customers’ demands. But what if you work in an industry that’s heavily regulated? How can you meet these regulatory demands without sacrificing the customer experience? Stay tuned for the final part of this blog series to find out.

Want to read more? Click a link below to jump to the other segments of this blog series:

Part 1: What Does “Customer Experience” Really Mean?

Part 3: How to Solve the Disconnect Between Compliance Regulations and Customer Experience

Is a great customer experience required to grow your account base, and retain accounts in financial services? As the world shifts to a ‘digital first’ orientation – financial services organizations and insurance companies are under pressure to improve the online customer experience, particularly in the face of ‘fintech and insuretech’ startups that use it as a competitive advantage to take market share – and keep it.

Gartner, the world’s leading research and advisory company, recently published the Gartner 2019 Customer Experience Management Survey:

“As part of Gartner’s 2019 Customer Experience Management Survey, executives at 56 financial services firms were asked the extent of what their firms competed/compete/will compete on the basis of CX two years ago, today and in two years. While only 34% of firms said they almost completely or fully competed on this basis two years ago, 59% said they do today and 80% said they will in two years, which is an incredibly rapid shift.”

Source: Gartner “Enhancing Customer Experience Maturity in Commercial Banking,” Financial Services Business Leader Research Team, 13 December 2019.

Again – in two years from now, 80% of the respondents expect that they will be competing almost completely/completely on the basis of the customer experience.

As PWC notes in this new report – Financial Services Technology 2020 and Beyond: Embracing Disruption – fintechs and other new market entrants  “typically offer a better customer experience….” – as a competitive advantage.

Given the onslaught of Fintech and Insurtech companies – which arguably are founded on simplifying the user experience through mobile tech (the ‘Apple–ization’ of finance if you will), what do we believe traditional players / incumbents should do to improve customer experience – especially the online experience?

One area worth investigating is the linkage between your self-service options (portal, app, website) and your customer service channels. Often times self-service options are siloed with limited, or no connection to customer service channels.  That can make it difficult for your self-service customer to get help when the portal does not deliver what they need.

Digital self-service is great for providing an optimal customer experience – until it’s not. Then the customer looks for an easy way to ask for help via a quick message. If that choice can be made readily available in the user interface of the app or portal – great. If it is a channel that can also include rich context and document or image sharing as well – even better. And if the channel is completely integrated into your back-end support infrastructure (core platforms, CRM, contact center, etc) – you’re golden. Unlike many solutions that improve the customer experience, this can be a relatively easy, painless way to move those experience scores up and make you a hero.  Who doesn’t want that!

Want more data to support providing these seamless digital banking or insurance channels? Check out this whitepaper. Want an implementation guide to help formulate a solution? Check out this guide.