How digital transformation helps in Customer Experience for BFSI product?

As the world gears up to adopt a digital-first mindset, the sun has now set on traditional ways of managing customers for all sectors including the BFSI.

Banks and fintech companies are now leaning on digital transformation to elevate customer experiences on all fronts.

We are now part of the digital-first economy as customers worldwide rely on Google searches, apps, and websites for everything they need.

As per research, it’s safe to assume 100% of customer journeys now begin online while shopping for a new credit card, mortgage, or bank account. 87% initiating the process online while the remaining 13% end up with Google recommendations apart from checking with friends, peers, and social media contacts.

Banking and financial solutions are playing a big role in helping customers use digital and remote channels effectively.

Customers can manage debts, adjust budgets, and reap full benefits of digital tools made available to them for a seamless customer experience.

A delightful customer experience (CX) leads to happy customers and gives organizations a chance to maximize growth, and minimize operational risks.

It increases the efficiency of the workforce and keeps the team members happy and invigorated.

The modern technology landscape provides the means and solutions to ensure banks and fintechs perform well across all customer experience metrics. When leveraged with an analytically informed approach, it can help them gain tremendous value from their CX investments.

Define your CX goals

Customers don't switch loyalties just because your competitors are a little better than you. They usually leave when they are fed up with what you offer or how you treat them. As per a survey, 69% of respondents said they would leave their bank due to poor service while 54% felt most financial companies need to improve their customer service.

Says Owen Wheatley, lead partner, ISG Banking and Financial Services, “Customers today want more nuanced and personalized service from banks, financial services firms and insurers, and new entrants are responding with a one-stop-shop experience that’s forcing established firms to innovate and compete.”

Before customers decide to break up with you in pursuit of better customer experience, it’s time to define your CX goals and have clear objectives to get the most out of digital transformation.

Top goals should include:

• Getting feedback - Asking relevant questions to gather feedback is crucial for understanding what shapes the customer experience.
• Connecting feedback to customer-specific data - With the help of advanced analytics, feedback from individual customers needs to be connected to customer-specific data obtained from channel interactions, product/service usage, and digital footprints. Disparate channel interaction data is necessary to get a comprehensive picture.
• Analyzing the data - The data gathered from different sources then needs to be analyzed to identify places where change can be introduced to evoke the desired customer behavior. A more actionable view is necessary to identify specific breakpoints in the customer journey where the introduction of new elements can have a significant impact on the overall outcome.

Banks and financial companies are now building their digital tools arsenal to create the best CX. They need to ensure clear communication and well-managed expectations to induce transparency and trust in all processes and interactions. Only then would it be possible to address the growing demands and expectations of team members, customers, and shareholders effectively.

Redefining outcomes with exceptional customer experience

Technology-led shifts are opening new avenues for innovation and stellar customer service. There is a strong inclination towards all things digital now. As the BFSI sector continues to upgrade its technology stack, here's what modernization is helping them achieve.

Self-service

Thanks to seamless connectivity and mobile applications, customer self-service has now become a reality for all. As per a Forrester survey, 55% of Singaporean customers said they would not want to have a bank account with a bank that does not have a branch while 9% said they preferred having a bank branch to manage their everyday banking needs.

Customers now have full access to their accounts and investment portfolios. Similarly, organizations too get an access to the massive amount of data that can be used by data analytics platforms and machine learning algorithms to get deeper insights into customer behavior. These in turn give them a chance to optimize processes, develop new products, and empower customers.

Data analytics has also been helping them build detailed customer profiles that can be used to offer personalized advice to customers at different junctures of their financial journey.

24X7 support

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is helping organizations alleviate the strain on the workforce with AI-enabled chatbots.

As per Gartner, 70% of customer interactions will now leverage machine learning (ML) applications, chatbots, and mobile messaging by 2022 to drive conversations.

Chatbots and the like provide a simpler way to automate tasks and respond to queries such as account balance, nearest branch details, and procedures to be followed for address change.

What's more, bots can be trained to understand language styles to converse more effectively.

They ensure 24X7 availability and constant support across digital channels.

Omnichannel experience

Customers want to access services from different devices and channels. They may see something on social media, inquire about it on the website, receive the necessary information via email, and sign up using a mobile app.

As customers go channel-hopping, organizations can follow their digital footprints to ensure omnichannel customer engagement and personalize the experience. Real-time data synchronization is also possible to facilitate a seamless experience across channels - both digital and offline.

Unparallel personalization

When it comes to delivering value, nothing can beat the role of personalization. It is helping the BFSI sector put customers at the core of everything. It helps elevate the customer journey with the right solutions. BFSI is now offering prescriptive, real-time, and machine-learning personalization to their customers.

While prescriptive personalization helps them anticipate customer needs based on historical data, real-time allows them to make recommendations to customers and engage with them when they are go searching for something you have to offer. Machine-learning personalization helps organizations make informed decisions about choosing the ways to reach them based on their behavior.

Automated onboarding

The client onboarding process involves a lot of steps including gathering information, background verification, account setup, and compliance. RPA and cognitive technologies are helping organizations save up to 50% in onboarding costs.

A typical bank with 125,000 customers experienced one-time savings of $ 100 million on onboarding costs and saw the potential of saving yet another $ 100 million in savings every 3 years by automating ongoing monitoring processes.

With Robotic Process Automation (RPA), it's literally like having a virtual workforce to manage important business functions without human intervention. It can scan and verify documents, run a credit check, and escalate unusual activities/issues.

Efficient risk management

Agility and security are extremely important for digital banks to thrive. AI and ML are ensuring both, flagging potential fraud even before it occurs through constant monitoring. A location, an activity, or a transaction that's not in line with the profile is immediately brought to the notice of risk management teams for review.

AI also detects financial irregularities enabling financial services companies to take the necessary measures to prevent fraud. These companies are also leveraging blockchain to eliminate complex, opaque fee structures. They are now considering distributed ledger settlement to enable low-cost, almost-instant payments to secure transactions.

Thanks to its decentralized nature, blockchain offers total transparency to customers. Gartner predicts the value-add of blockchain to surpass $3 trillion by 2030 while PwC had predicted that 77% of incumbents will adopt blockchain by 2020 as part of an in-production system or process.

Going forward

Global digital transformation in the BFSI sector is bound to see a CAGR of 15.4% for the forecast period 2020 to 2027 and garner $ 164.08 billion by 2027. Digital transformation is now an absolute necessity to survive in a digital-first world.

TransformHub is enabling leading organizations to prioritize solutions that revolve around customer expectations. It's the one-stop destination you can count on for all your digital transformation needs.

It empowers you with customer-centric solutions and strategies to come up with agile responses. With TransformHub, you can refurbish legacy systems, scale with agility, and deliver the perfect customer experience to build a robust digital future.

 TransformHub Insights Team