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Banks and financial services have had an eventful 2020. Although many factors have contributed to hit profit margins, it is also a year in which financial services are being used by more people than ever before (spurred on by stimulus checks). However, Finance surveys which focus on Customer Experience will not be showing most finance institutions in a positive light. To effectively capitalize on this influx of users traditional finance institutions need to improve their customer experience.
Challenging circumstances have exposed systemic customer experience issues that have plagued financial companies for ages. It is apparent that much work is to be done when it comes to CX for most financial institutions.
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Leaders in the finance space have traditionally focused on tracking cold hard cash, with little thought directed towards finding out how customers feel about their services. They can’t continue with this thought process – reduced profits have shown that Customer Experience is the only real differentiator they have right now.
62% of customers say experiences with one industry tend to influence their expectations from others.
Customer metrics are key to better business performance. The devil is in the details, and with customer experience, these details depend on finding a CX strategy that works for your vertical.
Higher customer satisfaction rates are key to better revenue growth, and that is the need of the hour for financial institutions. Finance institutions, like other organizations, need to break down silos, and embrace customer journeys.
By leveraging emotional market research, it gets easy for the companies to attract & retain customers which helps them gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Thus, the emotional experiences influence the customer repurchase behavior which in turn, impacts the company’s performance.
Instead of guessing what your customers may or may not like about your organization, or want from future services, financial institutions need to gather survey data and glean insights into customer thinking.Â
These insights are going to be critical for developing a CX strategy that works well
When analysing customer experience, companies usually concentrate on individual points. While this feedback is invaluable, it must not be siloed.Â
To gain a truly holistic picture of their customer experience, finance companies need to track customer journeys.Â
Tracking customer journeys allows organizations to observe their customers’ end-to-end experience. Part of improving CX along a customers’ journey is likely to involve streamlining your services as well- Are you offering multiple offerings that achieve the same outcome? Is your customer using even half the facilities they’ve been provided with?
If a customer starts their journey at one channel, do not force them to change to another – it would only irk consumers if they are made to switch from mobile, to laptops to phone calls. However they must have the option to do so, which would require that your customer data is synchronized across all channels.
Learn how to meet respondents where they are, drive survey completion while offering a seamless experience, Every Time!
This is an important aspect of improving your Customer Experience. Customers respond positively when asked for feedback proactively via finance surveys, instead of being forced to leave feedback after a negative experience. This is likely to fetch deeper insights about your organization’s business practices and how they’re affecting customers.Â
88% of people surveyed expect companies to accelerate digital initiatives due to the pandemic.
You need to figure out what channels work best for your customers and use them to communicate. Regular surveys and feedback will help gauge customer intent, long before they’ve reached the decision stage in their journey with your services.
Everyone keeps talking about personalization. It’s there in your electronics, your automobiles, your music and OTT streaming subscriptions.
The finance sector has always had personalization in one form or the other. Working with agents to get the best rate of interest, credit history based offers have been around for decades. However the key is to make the customers understand that they’re receiving services that are personalized for them.
Data suggests that 62% of surveyed customers expect companies to adapt based on their actions. The same study showed that only 47% of customers surveyed believe that they are receiving personalized services.
This goes to show that simply offering personalization isn’t enough, you have to constantly engage with customers to make them understand that they are receiving services which have been customized for them.
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Banking and financial services have complicated offerings. There have always been multiple options for loans, investments etc. from the same organization and now we’ve got digital-only offerings to add to this list.Â
Depending on the bank, branch or agent in question, one may get a completely different customer experience while applying for a loan than they would while opening a new account. However, one thing that they will retain across offerings and touchpoints is their perception of your organization.
Which is why your Customer Experience across your entire portfolio must be consistent. This will help customers buy into more services from a single organization, and reduce churn as well.
Ensuring a positive customer experience needs to permeate into every facet of your organization, but to do that effectively finance companies need to establish CX owners within their organizations.Â
These owners will define CX KPIs and establish a vision for your Customer Experience efforts, and use finance surveys to measure progress.
CX leadership needs to be backed by other departments as well, which may require training your customer facing teams so that they’re completely cognizant with your CX efforts.
Sidhant Shori is a Content Marketer at Voxco. He's got a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science Engineering and leverages his interest in market trends as well as his experience in creating content. He's also a Sci-Fi geek and enjoys video games and movies and also likes reading thrillers.
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