Financial institutions are known for a reliance on longstanding practices and a careful approach to disruption. But across all industries in the contemporary market, customer experience is establishing itself as a key differentiator—and finance is no exception.
Market pressures are creating both the opportunity and the mechanisms for a more customer-centered banking experience, and industry leaders are taking advantage. Creating genuine customer centricity demands a top-to-bottom reassessment of the processes and technology that drive an institution and a detailed realignment toward serving customer needs. The right technology, thoughtfully implemented, can be a critical piece of the puzzle in unlocking “stickier,” more personalized customer relationships.
Read more: How ITSM Solutions Provide a Path to Digital Transformation and Maturity
Three trends fueling the rise of customer centricity
Steady shifts in several areas are working together to make customer centricity in banking more achievable and desirable: technological evolution, customer preference, and regulatory changes.
Technology
Evolving tech capabilities are making new products and services possible for financial institutions. Among the most important developments are:
- More detailed data capture
- Expanded, structured data storage
- New analytical tools, including AI
- Flexible, quick-deploying site infrastructure
Banks can now learn more about their customers than ever before and can turn that information into valuable insights. Technology also enables new ways of connecting with customers, both online and at branch locations. In short, institutions have a host of new and easier ways to adapt the customer experience of banking to their clients’ needs.
Read more: Next-gen Networking: The Benefits of SASE in a Heightened Threat Landscape
Consumer expectations
What consumers expect from the financial marketplace both influences tech evolution and is influenced by it; as technology changes, so will customer standards. Five years ago, the pandemic turbocharged development and adoption of customer service technologies—some new and some accelerations of shifts already in progress. The influence of these rapid changes still appears today in consumer preferences for:
- Hyper-personalization of offerings
- Omnichannel communication
- Tailored, context-sensitive, speedy service
- A seamless and consistent customer experience
- Operational transparency
- Partnership and knowledge-sharing over transactional relationships
While finance as an industry has historically been cautious of change, the pressure of these evolving customer demands is increasing in banking’s shifting approach to the customer experience.
Regulatory changes
One particular recent rule change is doing a great deal to incentivize customer-centric transformation in the US: the institution of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Rule 1033, sometimes called “open banking.” Under this regulation, financial institutions must provide customers access to their own financial data and facilitate sharing or transferring it with other institutions for free.
Rule 1033 is motivating institutions to restructure their internal processes in ways that keep customer data more organized and make transfers easier. At the same time, these transformations better position banks to use the customer data they already have, enabling deeper analysis and valuable insights. And in the more competitive landscape that Rule 1033 fosters, banks are incentivized to pursue the more tailored offerings customers want in order to keep them around.
How banks are creating an updated customer experience
Banks are leveraging the new tools at their disposal to deliver on modern customer expectations—and anticipate where they might evolve. In some cases, that means developing all new products or services. But often, once banks dive deep into client needs, they find that their existing assets can adapt with a little help.
Evolving physical spaces
In line with a customer-centric approach, many banks are evolving the design of branch locations, embracing more casual (and less intimidating) environments geared toward comfort over sales. Some institutions have gone as far as creating cafes that are even open to non-customers, providing convenient amenities alongside financial advice and ATMs.
These spaces need to appear inviting and supply seamless functionality to draw foot traffic. Digital signage, point-of-sale systems, guest wireless access, and other features are opportunities to build brand awareness and consumer trust, making reliability a high priority. A well-architected network backbone supplies banks with the robust connectivity and flexible infrastructure necessary to connect with customers on their own terms.
Designing for a remote world
Online banking is, by now, nothing new. However, the financial industry’s cautious approach to new technology has made progress slow and, in many cases, has kept functionality centered on the traditional delivery of existing products and services.
As consumer preference for online and remote services grows, banks are finding branch locations increasingly underutilized—and are increasingly motivated to provide fuller-featured remote and online experiences. Pivoting to remote service is more achievable than ever with hosted unified communications and contact center solutions, which benefit bank employees as well as consumers.
These platforms let employees work flexibly from anywhere while still providing high-quality service to customers. They also open the door for AI integration and virtual agents to streamline support, autonomously handling frequently asked questions and intelligently escalating issues that need human attention. And with AI assistants to interpret customer data and recommend actions, service agents can deliver the prompt, personalized experience in a banking environment that customers have come to expect. elsewhere.
Tailoring offerings based on customer insight
With unprecedented customer knowledge at their disposal, it’s incumbent on banks to use it. Frequently, so-called “challenger banks”—smaller, newer institutions that can operate more nimbly—are leading the way on this front, segmenting their customers innovatively and creating highly customized products geared toward their values and preferences.
Behind these precisely targeted offerings are fine-grained insights powered by advanced data collection and analytics. With a more holistic view of their customers’ attitudes and behaviors, banks can realign both their offerings and their operations around what’s right for their market: a loan or mortgage fine-tuned for client income and preferences, values-driven investment recommendations, or even streamlined approvals and closing processes.
Technology is the catalyst for customer-centric banking
The customer experience of banking is undergoing a steady but sweeping transformation. To meet the moment, financial institutions need expert implementations of the latest technologies, tailored for a customer-centric approach. Pomeroy offers end-to-end solution design and support across the entire technology lifecycle for financial institutions of any type. Lean on our decades of industry experience to build the foundation for a new kind of customer relationship.
Get in touch with us to learn more.
