By Iain Banks, Regional Vice President, International Markets at TTEC, heads up the EMEA division and is an experienced, senior-level CX professional with a career spanning more than 18 years in the Global BPO/Contact Centre environment and with extensive experience of delivering CX and digital strategies for financial organisations;

In a complex, competitive and fast changing financial world with increasing customer demands, regulatory obligations, and disruptive technologies, the pressure is on for financial services to drive strategic growth and secure future success.  Many are looking at CX leadership to drive transformation to deliver differentiated, superior customer experiences.

40 percent of US millennials have switched banks due to poor customer service. Indeed, more than two-thirds (77 per cent) would switch to receive better service, according to recent research.

Meanwhile, in the traditionally slow-to-change insurance sector, 75 percent of incumbent insurers “believe the biggest impact to the industry will come from building new products to address the changing needs of the customer”, according to research from PwC and Startupbootcamp. Only 26% of financial executives say their contact centres are somewhat or very future-ready (down from 31% last year).  So how can the industry up its CX game?

Use emotion analytics

Emotion analytics enables you to treat individual customers differently, developing engagement that is personalized to each of their emotional as well as product needs. For example, the expected outcome of an inquiry may be to obtain a loan, but two customers with the same inquiry may have very different emotional needs, which in turn means they will respond differently to the same treatment.  For banks, the issue is about how to appear human in a highly automated world and empathic towards their customers to help build stronger relationships.

For instance, providing contact centre agents guidelines on how to connect with customers by looking at the intent of the request (e.g., taking out a loan), identifying a related action or service and then alerting customers to the opportunity. Another example may be taking the time to provide a special touch like a handwritten card. The key is to let customers know the company is listening to them and knows them well enough to offer services they can use, when they need them.

AIB is a great example of a bank placing associates at the forefront of their branch transformation.  Redesigned branches offer soft informal seating areas for customer discussions.  Tablets enable staff to hold informed consultative meetings, whilst sharing a screen with the customer.  If a more detailed discussion is needed with a specialist, customers can be introduced to an advisor via video conference, ensuring that the relevant specialist is available at all times.

Create contextually relevant Interactions

It can be tempting to automate and digitise as many interactions as possible, but experience shows this can be the wrong approach. For routine transactions, consumers prefer digital channels, but they give higher Net Promoter Scores to companies that allow customers to speak with a representative to resolve a problem, reports Bain & Co. Banks can earn greater loyalty by making routine interactions convenient and frictionless, while providing a high-touch service experience with an associate during emotional moments, such as an insurance claim.

Digital Customers

According to a J.D. Power survey, digital-only banking customers were dissatisfied with three areas: communication and advice; products and fees; and new account opening. Overcome those obstacles by helping customers understand the ins and outs of their digital banking services; assign associates to follow up on partially completed or abandoned activities like filling out online loan forms, allow customers to choose how they’d like to receive onboarding information (FAQ, live chat, voice, etc.), ask customers if they are satisfied with the onboarding experience and give them the option to contact a representative if they select “no” or have further questions.  In addition to the onboarding session, offer new customers a short review of what they purchased, how to use it, and provide details around accompanying products and services that might be helpful.

Using disruptive technologies

Organisations can combine the latest technologies in new, customer centric ways to provide better services. For example, instead of building a voice-enabled assistant with features similar to a website or app, what would enable a new way for banks to build and extend customer relationships?  Many financial services organizations take this approach.  “It will be less about a website or a mobile app as a destination and more about being where our members are and integrating with the technology around them, such as IoT and virtual assistants,” said Melissa Ehresman, USAA’s AVP of bank digital experiences, in the tech blog Tearsheet.

USAA are not alone, car insurance start-up Cuvva set up in 2014 is a mobile app you simply enter the registration number and approximate value of the car you are borrowing from a friend or family member, choose the time you want to be covered for, take a picture of the car and Cuvva will get you an instant quote. Cuvva integrates with Facebook so that you can see which of your friends have cars to borrow.

Cuvva queries various data sources to check driving licence data (The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s MyLicence scheme), the Claims and Underwriting Exchange and automated fraud protection to verify coverage quicker than legacy players can.

Launched in 2017, Homelyfe is a UK-based “insurtech” start-up that seeks to offer customers a range of insurance policies that they are able to manage from a single app. The app is designed to remove third parties, sales teams and comparison sites completely out of the equation by enabling customers to get quotes, purchase, manage and renew multiple insurance policies via their intuitive iOS and Google Play app.

Having launched its first insurance product at the start of 2018, Homelyfe claims to have slashed the process of securing a home insurance policy to under four minutes, and has its own rating engine and broker emulating system to pull third party data to expedite the process by learning as much as possible about users to cut basic questions out of the purchase process.

Understand which customer you are serving

Knowing which customer is in front of you is essential to understanding how to provide better service. Banks can now track individual preferences, including how a customer responds to marketing messages and behaves at different points in the customer journey. For example, the bank should know when a decrease in engagement is a warning sign, and when it’s an indication of customer satisfaction.

Creating a 360-degree assessment based on customer, employee, and market information can uncover a number of strategic issues needed to address transformation. A cultural change management programme designed to incentivise branch staff to deliver the right customer experience at each interaction can drive loyalty and increase sales.

Finally, create a roadmap for new initiatives. That way, only the initiatives with the strongest customer experience impact would be launched and more resources would be dedicated to ensuring that they would be executed well.