By Rahul Kumar
Ensuring a superior customer experience or “CX” is a high priority for nearly all banks, a recent industry report shows. No wonder, since a vast majority (83 percent) of CX decision-makers believe quality customer experiences are key to building brand loyalty and increasing deposit retention.
But bank customers do not have a singular experience. They have a series of experiences that, strung together, comprise a customer journey. Unfortunately, developing a comprehensive view of the customer journey at scale is extremely difficult for banks to do.
Oftentimes, the technology that supports various customer experiences – from checking accounts, to auto loans, to mortgages, to credit cards and beyond – are legacy solutions built for singular use cases. This creates fragmented experiences for customers, and siloed operations for institutions. As a result, bank operating models tend to be siloed as either product-oriented or channel-oriented, rather than customer-oriented and cohesive.
“A typical regional bank has over 1,500 customer journeys (across business units, product lines, and customer interactions),” McKinsey writes in a report on banks and the customer experience. “Streamlined, seamless experiences still matter and drive customer satisfaction. However, our research shows that the ‘bookend’ journeys of shopping, onboarding and problem resolution disproportionally drive the overall experience that a customer has with their bank.”
Who owns the customer journey?
Banks that fail to understand and facilitate the customer journey will lose business to more customer-centric competitors. But who is responsible for the success of a customer’s journey? In large part, the answer depends on who you are as a customer.
If you are a large company or wealthy individual, typically, a dedicated banker will own your customer journey. Someone at the bank assumes responsibility for understanding the needs of larger customers and curating a suite of products to meet those needs.
On the other hand, due to operational constraints, a large majority of retail customers might not have dedicated bankers, so they often navigate their own banking journeys as needs arise. That’s because it’s never been financially viable for banks to provide every customer with a personalized, VIP banking experience.
The AI differentiator
Fortunately, thanks to breakthroughs in AI technologies, banks are now able to deliver a personal, white-glove banking experience to all customers at scale in a way both financially and operationally feasible. Cloud-native customer experience platforms today can leverage AI, automation and digital self-service across multiple channels for all bank customers, while equipping bank employees with the tools needed to deliver superior customer service.
Providing automation and self-service functionality across connected channels empowers a bank’s customers to complete routine tasks (such as checking balances or transferring funds) without having to wait on hold for an agent to assist them or navigating cumbersome IVR menus. Critically, offering more self-service options for customers frees bank employees to focus on more complex interactions and even higher value interactions.
AI also ensures these service employees have the information they need for customers when they need it. And the contextual awareness and sentiment analysis capabilities of AI help call center agents navigate challenging customer conversations and situations with real-time suggestions.
Getting started
As McKinsey reports, “Customer experience is proving to be the strategic differentiator for banks, with experienced leaders outperforming laggards.” For this reason, banks that strategically embed AI, automation and other digital solutions throughout the customer journey to create seamless, personalized and contextually relevant experiences for their customers will be among the sector’s winners.
Here are four steps for banks to lay the groundwork for AI to optimize the customer journey:
Install a customer journey cabinet. Create a collaborative team with members from critical business and technology teams that holds collective responsibility and accountability to ensure CX strategy and investment decisions are taken with the whole customer journey and relationship in mind. Identify and institutionalize metrics where the performance of the cabinet can be tracked continuously.
Make customer experience a differentiator. In a competitive banking landscape, customer experience is a key differentiator. Personalized experiences can be facilitated on a larger scale by analyzing historical data and real-time interactions. This enables banks to provide tailor-made solutions and services, strengthening the customer journey and loyalty.
Canvases, not siloes. The customer journey must be an enterprise capability. Banks should eliminate rigid organizational structures that segment the customer journey and create barriers to collaboration. Imagine the customer journey as taking place along a broad canvas rather than as a series of separate stops along the way.
A unified platform. Point solutions invariably create a disjointed customer journey with plenty of side trips, dead ends and cul-de-sacs. Having one vendor for calls and another for virtual agents is just asking for trouble. A good option is a cloud-native, multichannel platform with integrated AI technologies.
Conclusion
Bank customers in the digital age have more options – and expectations – than ever. To succeed in such a hypercompetitive environment, a good option is a collaborative, AI-based approach to the customer journey that avoids the pitfalls of segmented functionality and siloed data.
Integrating AI capabilities into cloud-based systems and processes provides banks with a comprehensive and transparent view of the customer journey that makes it easier to spot both revenue opportunities and potential problems that may diminish the customer experience and brand loyalty.
Rahul Kumar is the vice president and general manager for financial services at Talkdesk.
