In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business world, companies in the banking and financial services industry (BFSI) are constantly seeking ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors. One key area that can make a significant impact is customer experience (CX). But how can innovation help companies to turn the banking customer experience into business value?
Why CX is Crucial for Banking, Financial Services and Insurance Companies
In the heavily regulated BFSI, CX is often the only way for companies to truly differentiate themselves. In fact, a study revealed that 86% of retail bank customers are willing to share data to personalize their banking experience. Furthermore, in general, 80% of customers have switched brands because of poor customer experience, while 43% were somewhat likely to switch after just a single negative customer service interaction. Meanwhile, Retail banks that regularly practice customer experience optimization tend to grow 3.2x faster than those that don’t.
How CX Initiatives Often Fail by Not Having a Clear Link to Value
Efforts to improve the banking customer experience must be linked to business value, to be sustainable, have purpose, and drive business growth. One way to do this is to link CX to financial performance metrics, which are immediately definable and trackable. For example, it has been found that brands with superior customer service bring in 5.7 times more revenue.
The best way to create this link is to first understand the value that a great customer experience creates. For example, poor engagement among customer service reps can cause attrition both in terms of employees and customers, with 84% of reps looking to move. By investing in CX, you can have better retention rates for both customers and your people that are tasked with taking care of your customers.
Looking at stats, like the fact that customers switching brands due to poor CX costs companies upwards of USD 1.6 trillion, can also help to create an initial appreciation of the value that CX can bring. For a CX initiative and strategy to be successful, it’s necessary for the business and its people to clearly understand why it is valuable to invest time, money, and other resources into it.
4 Ways Innovation Can Link Banking Customer Experience to Value
1. Digital Transformation
Invest in new technologies and platforms that enhance CX—for example, adopting an omnichannel approach to CX. A great mobile messaging solution will empower companies to build, deploy, and scale new communications and engagement capabilities. Together, an omnichannel strategy driven by a good mobile messaging solution can help you create seamless and personalized CX across all channels. In fact, digital transformation has been found to bolster contact centre revenues by up to 28%.
2. Leverage Data Analytics and AI
These technologies can help you better understand customer needs and preferences. By analysing data from various sources such as customer interactions, social media and surveys, companies can create detailed customer profiles and deliver personalized and relevant experiences. In fact, over 70% of millennials are likely to make repeat purchases and recommendations when brands use AI to improve the banking customer experience.
3. Invest in Employee Training and Development
Engaged employees are more likely to remain and grow with you, and employees who deliver positive experiences to customers have higher levels of engagement. Furthermore, creating a learning culture by investing in regular training and development can improve retention rates by 30 to 50 percent. This creates a win-win situation for customers, employees and companies.
4. Leverage Customer Engagement Platforms
This will help you to track customer interactions across various touchpoints and gain insights into customer behaviours and preferences. By having a single view of the customer, companies can quickly identify issues and opportunities and take appropriate actions. By leveraging customer engagement platforms, companies gain a holistic view of their customers and take a data-driven approach to improving CX. With 86% of customers willing to pay more for better CX, this is an excellent way to link CX to value creation.
Adopting an Omnichannel Approach
Probably the most powerful thing you can do to improve your CX and help link it to value creation is to adopt an omnichannel approach to CX. By investing in a mobile messaging solution, a single seamless platform for all customer communications, companies can ensure a consistent and responsive presence across all channels. This will also help businesses gain a deeper understanding of the impact of their CX initiatives, and inform data-driven decisions for improvement. In fact, 67% of businesses found revenues rising by up to 28.5% after implementing CPaaS into their CX strategies. CPaaS is an excellent tool for implementing an omnichannel strategy by providing a unified platform for your communications.
As has been demonstrated, innovation is a key driver in turning the banking customer experience into business value. By leveraging new technologies and approaches such as omnichannel, mobile messaging solutions, data analytics, and AI, companies in the BFSI sector can improve their CX and drive growth. With an omnichannel approach, companies can provide seamless and personalized CX across all channels, leading to increased customer engagement and retention. This in turn can create value, financially and otherwise, for companies that choose to pay attention to this crucial metric. This is true especially in BFSI, where it is often the key, and sometimes even the only, differentiator.
How Syniverse Concierge Can Fit into Your Omnichannel Approach
Your omnichannel approach can be managed conveniently through the adoption of a CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) solution, such as Syniverse CPaaS Concierge. CPaaS provides the people who manage your customer communications and relationships with the same benefits that your customers enjoy through an omnichannel approach. For companies concerned about cost and investment, there is no requirement to invest heavily in technology infrastructure as it is cloud-based. It is also, therefore, easily scalable and quickly implemented, provides unmatched data gathering and analytics tools, and makes delivery and tracking seamless and intuitive.
Using Syniverse CPaaS Concierge, you can combine communications channels such as WhatsApp, SMS, MMS, push notifications, voice messages and others, into one simple, seamless, convenient, and powerful platform, secured by the latest industry-standard mobile identity and security features. Your teams can then manage your entire omnichannel presence with ease, consistency, and responsiveness, all while creating a very personal bond and emotional connection with your customers.
How Syniverse’s Omnichannel Approach Can Empower BFSI Companies
With rising costs and increasing customer demands, many BFSI players are finding it challenging to devote the necessary human resources to manage and coordinate customer service requests. However, an omnichannel approach that uses automation and a single interface can help you do more with fewer resources. For example:
- Simplified, automated processes. Your processes can be simplified and incorporate automated SMS and WhatsApp notifications and assistance, helping customers enjoy a more responsive experience, while freeing up human resources for more important tasks.
- Frictionless authentication. Frictionless authentication and security, which is integrated into Syniverse CPaaS Concierge, can help to further improve your CX. This is particularly true if you use a customer segmentation approach for physical access to branches, services, and other exclusive spaces.
- Integrated voice messaging. You can use voice message calls to remind customers of important events, such as upcoming card payments and more. Plus, with Syniverse CPaaS Concierge’s integrated voice messaging AI, your messages will not sound robotic.
- Chatbots and AI-driven tools. Chatbots and AI-driven digital assistants can be integrated to further reduce the load on your human resources. By allowing computers to deal with most basic and frequent inquiries and requests, human intervention is not required as often.
Syniverse CPaaS Concierge has already proven itself, having enhanced engagement by up to 40%, increased revenue for a single mobile marketing campaign by over USD 1.2 million, and helped a specialty retail chain achieve 34X ROI on a single SMS campaign. The platform is relied on today by financial institutions around the world, helping to transform CX and create real, measurable value!
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