How will customer experience in financial services evolve by 2030?

Pan­el
SA ‑Susan Allen, head of cus­tomer trans­for­ma­tion, Bar­clays UK
AP — Adam Pow­ers, glob­al head of expe­ri­ence design, HSBC Wealth and Per­son­al Bank­ing
SR — Saman­tha Richard­son, senior visioneer­ing con­sul­tant, Twilio
KR — Kat Robin­son, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence direc­tor, Metro Bank
AS — Ahmed Sheikh, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy direc­tor, RSA

What could cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (CX) look like for finan­cial ser­vices oper­a­tors in 2030?
AP: Future fore­cast­ing is always risky, but key things point to the like­ly tra­jec­to­ry. The con­cept of every cus­tomer hav­ing their bank in their pock­et will evolve, and that smart­phone expe­ri­ence will become more ful­ly fea­tured, con­tex­tu­al and per­son­alised. There is also a push to sim­pli­fy finan­cial ser­vices in gen­er­al and bank­ing in par­tic­u­lar. The indus­try needs to draw on the best CX in oth­er envi­ron­ments like the retail or auto­mo­tive indus­tries.

SA: There has been such a sig­nif­i­cant shift to dig­i­tal bank­ing. We have gone from zero to over 10 mil­lion reg­is­tered app users in just eight years. No tech­nol­o­gy can pro­vide empa­thy and human touch, though. We still need to make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to access face-to-face ser­vices, either in-branch, over the phone, or through video calls. Tech­nol­o­gy is open­ing up chan­nels and oppor­tu­ni­ties for bank­ing to go into people’s homes.

KR: A lot of foun­da­tion­al work needs doing to curate cross-chan­nel jour­neys – so some­one can start some­thing in-branch and com­plete it lat­er at home. While dig­i­tal chan­nels will be more devel­oped by 2030, face-to-face bank­ing will remain impor­tant. Research shows that three in four Brits are com­fort­able using tech­nol­o­gy to man­age their mon­ey – but what about the remain­ing 25%?

AS: The bank­ing sec­tor has come a long way in its dig­i­tal evo­lu­tion, but oth­ers in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try lag behind from a CX per­spec­tive. For exam­ple, it’s inter­est­ing to com­pare what’s hap­pen­ing in the Unit­ed States, where cus­tomers can use sub­scrip­tion-based mod­els to bun­dle insur­ance prod­ucts from var­i­ous providers. Insurtechs here are busy play­ing catch up, but the reg­u­la­tors need to play a part and not sti­fle inno­va­tion.

SR: There is a mas­sive dri­ve to make finan­cial ser­vices more acces­si­ble and inte­grate them into our lives. Twilio works with cus­tomers world­wide, and in some regions, we are see­ing the rise of What­sApp bank­ing. And in the US, it’s pos­si­ble to com­plete an insur­ance claim from start to fin­ish over SMS. Over in Asia, data-dri­ven super-apps enable cus­tomers to pur­chase goods wher­ev­er it’s most con­ve­nient.

What are the biggest cur­rent CX chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties for finan­cial ser­vices oper­a­tors?

AP: The role of the brand expe­ri­ence is under­es­ti­mat­ed in many organ­i­sa­tions, not just in finan­cial ser­vices. There should be a con­ti­nu­ity of expe­ri­ence across every chan­nel, across our prod­ucts and ser­vices. If there isn’t, you’ll lose the customer’s trust. Mar­ket­ing and CX design teams need to col­lab­o­rate more. Addi­tion­al­ly, we are imple­ment­ing the lat­est cyber­se­cu­ri­ty tech­nol­o­gy and authen­ti­ca­tion as we want our cus­tomers to feel secure in an envi­ron­ment where fraud and scam­ming are accel­er­at­ing.

AH: One of the main chal­lenges is that the cost of tech­nol­o­gy imple­men­ta­tion will increase, espe­cial­ly for finan­cial ser­vices with com­plex lega­cy sys­tems. Oper­a­tors want to meet ris­ing cus­tomer expec­ta­tions but at a rea­son­able expense. As we advance, this is the most sig­nif­i­cant prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion con­cern and could lim­it dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, cyber risk needs to be man­aged and mit­i­gat­ed, but organ­i­sa­tions don’t want to get too bogged down. It’s a tricky bal­ance to strike, as cus­tomers need to have that pro­tec­tion.

KR: There is a tech­no­log­i­cal arms race between the banks, and small­er chal­lenger banks, like Metro, don’t have the deep­est pock­ets. It’s easy to fall into the copy­cat­ting trap. You have to be clear about your cus­tomer base’s wants and needs and devel­op prod­ucts and ser­vices that will improve their expe­ri­ence. I’m not sure our cus­tomers will be bank­ing in the meta­verse in 2030.

SA: There’s ample oppor­tu­ni­ty for banks to sim­pli­fy dig­i­tal func­tions and use data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to per­son­alise what cus­tomers see in their bank in their pock­et. There is so much func­tion­al­i­ty in apps today, but the aver­age per­son only needs to access about three things. We want to make the dig­i­tal app expe­ri­ence more rel­e­vant to our users.

SR: One excit­ing thing we are see­ing is the change in the way some lega­cy finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies are oper­at­ing in terms of CX. They are col­lab­o­rat­ing more, recruit­ing devel­op­ers, but sit­ting them next to the cus­tomer ser­vice team to learn from that first-hand expe­ri­ence, and there is gen­uine inte­gra­tion. That way, they can respond to cre­ate a human, cus­tomer-cen­tric expe­ri­ence. Also, con­sid­er­ing about 45 mil­lion scam text mes­sages were sent in the UK last sum­mer alone, secu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms need to be effec­tive.

How can finan­cial ser­vices oper­a­tors ensure trust remains at the heart of their CX solu­tions?

KR: We are try­ing to be more imag­i­na­tive as a bank and think­ing beyond mon­ey. We have start­ed run­ning in-per­son and vir­tu­al net­work events and work­shops and have a finan­cial edu­ca­tion pro­gramme that, for exam­ple, explains how to spot scams and online fraud. We also run a school pro­gramme that cul­mi­nates in a branch vis­it to show that they are not intim­i­dat­ing places. These ser­vices, which don’t cost a lot to pro­vide, are designed to under­stand, engage and sup­port our cus­tomers bet­ter, to build trust.

SA: Even now, going into a bank branch can be daunt­ing for many peo­ple. We want to take bank­ing to our cus­tomers and go deep­er into the com­mu­ni­ties we serve. We are tri­alling dif­fer­ent for­mats to see where peo­ple need us most – in libraries and shop­ping cen­tres, for instance. There is a big demand for finan­cial edu­ca­tion and help from banks. Recent­ly, we offered 400 video appoint­ments and had to close the lines with­in two hours, with over 1,000 peo­ple on the wait­ing list. Enabling more peo­ple to feel in con­trol of their mon­ey is
crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant.

AP: At HSBC, the cus­tomer research team is part of the expe­ri­ences group. That col­lab­o­ra­tion is grow­ing in impor­tance and helps engen­der trust. We need to be more sophis­ti­cat­ed in how we con­tact our cus­tomers and how we gar­ner insights. Research needs to be done across the entire con­tin­u­um to dri­ve the kind of propo­si­tions that we devel­op and right to the oth­er end in terms of cus­tomer life­time val­ue and enhanc­ing ser­vices.

AS: If finan­cial ser­vices get the CX wrong, peo­ple are now quick­er to com­plain online, espe­cial­ly on social media plat­forms. So oper­a­tors need to be vig­i­lant and respond fast to bad press and neg­a­tive com­ments. It’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­stand why the cus­tomer is unhap­py and fix some­thing that is bro­ken, but it also allows you to ensure the cus­tomer that you are there for them and lis­ten­ing.

SR: Build­ing excel­lent CX on top of bank­ing is eas­i­er than build­ing bank­ing onto great CX. Those that com­mit to human-cen­tred bank­ing and show a gen­uine dri­ve to meet and care for cus­tomers in their pre­ferred chan­nels will win trust and cus­tom in the com­ing years.

To find out more, vis­it twilio.com/solutions/financial-services