CX is a key strategic asset that financial institutions mustn’t forget

The unique pres­sures on com­pa­nies dur­ing the pan­dem­ic trig­gered a gold­en age for cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. While the ini­tial tran­si­tion to remote work­ing and a ful­ly dig­i­tal ser­vice mod­el with­out phys­i­cal branch­es was no doubt dif­fi­cult, the out­comes for trust and loy­al­ty were huge­ly pos­i­tive.

This was a long time com­ing, of course, and stay-at-home man­dates mere­ly accel­er­at­ed, albeit very sud­den­ly, the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strate­gies that finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies have been hon­ing for a decade or more. The digi­ti­sa­tion of oth­er con­sumer ser­vices has recal­i­brat­ed cus­tomer expec­ta­tions, but to keep up finan­cial insti­tu­tions have first had to deal with their lega­cy sys­tems.

The extreme cir­cum­stances of lock­down forced them to final­ly make the invest­ments in cloud mod­erni­sa­tion required to inter­act with con­sumers on their desired terms. A high-touch oper­at­ing mod­el for acquir­ing, ser­vic­ing and advis­ing cus­tomers was no longer fit for pur­pose. At the heart of invest­ments was a focus on a more fric­tion­less cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, pow­ered by tech­nolo­gies such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to facil­i­tate self-ser­vice and hyper-per­son­al­i­sa­tion.

“As cus­tomers have got­ten more used to the dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence offered by non-indus­try play­ers like Net­flix and Ama­zon, the ques­tion they have often asked is: why can’t my bank offer me the same expe­ri­ence?” says Rahul Kumar, senior direc­tor of finan­cial ser­vices strat­e­gy at Talkdesk, a glob­al leader in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence solu­tions. “We absolute­ly saw an increase in the adop­tion of digi­ti­sa­tion, and cloud-based mod­erni­sa­tion of lega­cy sys­tems, dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.”

“Unable to rely on their phys­i­cal branch­es for the first time, finan­cial insti­tu­tions had to meet cus­tomers when and where they want­ed to meet with them, on the device of their choos­ing,” says Kumar. “As a result, there has been rapid demand for the emerg­ing inno­va­tions need­ed to offer the expe­ri­ence that cus­tomers are look­ing for, includ­ing dig­i­tal tools and automa­tion tech­nolo­gies like AI. It may have been out of sheer neces­si­ty but it real­ly boost­ed cus­tomer trust and loy­al­ty.”

The return to pre-pan­dem­ic behav­iours, how­ev­er, appears to have caused some com­pla­cen­cy. Assured by their Covid-era enhance­ments, along with the return of phys­i­cal branch­es, many com­pa­nies feel they can han­dle addi­tion­al call vol­umes while also serv­ing cus­tomers across dig­i­tal chan­nels with­out fur­ther invest­ment. Such com­pla­cen­cy could harm them in the long run.

The impact is already being felt. A recent report by a lead­ing CX ana­lyst found cus­tomer expe­ri­ence qual­i­ty has fall­en back to ear­ly 2020 lev­els, revers­ing gains made in 2021. Mean­while, cus­tomer trust in banks fell for the first time since 2018.

A sep­a­rate study by Talkdesk found that sev­en in 10 cus­tomers are more loy­al to finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies that are active­ly invest­ing in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and accel­er­at­ing their pace of inno­va­tion. How­ev­er, expec­ta­tions are fail­ing to be met, in large part because banks are using tra­di­tion­al con­tact cen­tre solu­tions which are not built specif­i­cal­ly for finan­cial ser­vices firms.

“The pan­dem­ic forced peo­ple to break their rou­tines and come out of their com­fort zones. Cru­cial­ly, they no longer need­ed to main­tain loy­al­ty with a bank just because it was the clos­est branch to their home or on their com­mute to work,” says Bha­vana Rana, direc­tor of prod­uct and indus­try mar­ket­ing, finan­cial ser­vices and insur­ance, at Talkdesk. “That caused a change in cus­tomer behav­iours and, nat­u­ral­ly, war­rant­ed quite urgent invest­ments in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.”

“Cus­tomer loy­al­ty was up for grabs. If an organ­i­sa­tion did not quick­ly adapt to the chang­ing behav­iours, they’d very quick­ly lose cus­tomers,” Rana con­tin­ues. “But now, with con­tin­ued sup­ply chain issues and volatil­i­ty in the mar­ket, the focus seems to be shift­ing more towards cost-sav­ing mea­sures, with less empha­sis on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. That’s a mis­take. Revert­ing to the old way of doing things will alien­ate cus­tomers. Finan­cial ser­vices firms must con­tin­ue to use cus­tomer expe­ri­ence as a strate­gic asset.”

Talkdesk, whose automa­tion-first cloud-native con­tact cen­tre solu­tions opti­mise the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, has been work­ing with finan­cial ser­vices insti­tu­tions to help lever­age their CX learn­ings from the pan­dem­ic and, impor­tant­ly, main­tain momen­tum. Last year, it launched the first enter­prise-grade con­tact cen­tre plat­form built specif­i­cal­ly for finan­cial ser­vices firms. Talkdesk Finan­cial Ser­vices Expe­ri­ence Cloud enables banks, cred­it unions and insur­ers to deliv­er con­nect­ed, intel­li­gent and secure inter­ac­tions more effort­less­ly, across any com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel.

The mod­ern, uni­fied cus­tomer expe­ri­ence plat­form is tai­lored to meet finan­cial ser­vices needs, with fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ties that sup­port essen­tial indus­try work­flows and bespoke AI mod­els that solve spe­cif­ic issues with­in the finan­cial sec­tor. The plug-and-play solu­tion includes pre-pack­aged indus­try inte­gra­tions, sig­nif­i­cant­ly accel­er­at­ing the time­line for any dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion hap­pen­ing in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try, enabling organ­i­sa­tions to realise val­ue from invest­ments in days rather than years.

An inno­v­a­tive con­tact cen­tre solu­tion designed to address banks’ and insur­ers’ top cus­tomer ser­vice pri­or­i­ties, such as account ser­vic­ing, lend­ing, pol­i­cy ser­vic­ing and claims, will be vital as cus­tomers con­tin­ue to expect hyper-per­son­alised expe­ri­ences acces­si­ble imme­di­ate­ly on the device and chan­nel of their pref­er­ence.

“The pan­dem­ic chal­lenged the tra­di­tion­al ways that finan­cial insti­tu­tions oper­at­ed, and it’s cru­cial now that banks take those learn­ings for­ward rather than leave them in the past,” says Kumar. “To dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves going for­ward and explore new busi­ness mod­els, such as embed­ded finance, com­pa­nies need to first ensure they are engag­ing how their cus­tomers want. Invest­ing in a mod­ern CX plat­form will allow them to deliv­er a con­nect­ed, cohe­sive expe­ri­ence, irre­spec­tive of where the inter­ac­tion starts and where it then trav­els.”

Rana adds, “One thing that has been con­stant through all of the upheaval is our need for a human con­nec­tion. Cus­tomers will always seek con­ve­nience and val­ue offered through dig­i­tal chan­nels, but main­tain­ing a human touch is equal­ly impor­tant. Our goal is to help finan­cial ser­vices firms deliv­er the great­est expe­ri­ence pos­si­ble, util­is­ing an end-to-end cus­tomer expe­ri­ence solu­tion which gives them val­ue on day one. That’s what will deliv­er the loy­al­ty that finan­cial insti­tu­tions and insur­ers crave.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it talkdesk.com/financial-services

Pro­mot­ed by Talkdesk