World is moving from “Process-Centric Digital Strategy” to “Customer-Centric Digital Strategy”. Like every other industry, financial services organizations also need to quickly adapt to the shift.
While designing digital strategy and the relevant customer experience associated with it, banks must think like an NPO (non-profitable organization), where the goal is not to be successful in terms of wealth, but in terms of giving value to the groups of people they administer to. Below approach explains how to embed NPO thought process throughout the digital journey and focus on customer value creation:
- Define brand goals - A large Retail Bank in UK wants to rank the top most in customer service, trust and advocacy in personal and business banking by 2020.
- Understand trends in the market impacting customer - For instance, new business models are evolving where disruptors like Moven and Simple are taking customers away from traditional banks with an “all-digital” approach. Firms like PayPal and Square are revolutionizing payments with a flat monthly fee for small businesses to process unlimited card payments. Crowdfunding through P2P platforms like Kickstarter and Rebirth are changing the way we bank. And IBM Watson enabled Virtual Advisor is reducing the need for human advisor.
- Understand the implications of the trends to the segment of your business - Rapid innovation in business models and technology are throwing huge challenges like:
- Inconsistent service delivery
- Decentralized digital strategy
- Ineffective cross-channel measurement
- No multichannel customer profitability measurement
- "What if" analysis to go through all the possibilities and prioritising them against customer delight – More often than not, initiatives are prioritised based on the cost-benefit analysis to the company; Hardly any attention is given to the amount of customer delight, loyalty and advocacy to strengthen NPS and CSAT.
- Define your organization’s current state of digital maturity roughly based on below customer centric maturity model -
- Level - 1 - E2E transaction in customer channel of choice
- Level - 2- Consistent experience across channels
- Level - 3 - Seamless multichannel transaction for sales & services
- Level - 4 - Personalized customer lifecycle management through single customer view, real time decision making and next best action
- Level - 5 - Personalized brand experience through optimization of channel experience to reflect the brand promise and cultivate influencers
- Design a customer (both internal and external) journey roadmap - Create a roadmap based on customer centric user journey design based on the maturity level of the bank, LOB, portfolio, product or the service
- Align IT and Operations - Align IT architecture, infrastructure and operations capabilities and gaps across all functional layers such as:
- Distribution Channels - Social, mobile, branch, call centre, communities, webchat, ATM and email to name a few
- Business Enablement Platforms - Enterprise Content Management, Business Process Management, Portal, Mobility, Knowledge Management, etc.
- Analytics and Insights - Segmentation, client, product, channel insights, performance, process, marketing insights
- Client & Product Portfolio - Campaign management, client on-boarding, servicing, off-boarding, relationship and complaint management, interaction management, product, investment, credit portfolio management
- Product & Support - Current, saving, deposit accounts, personal & home loan, Credit card, equity, derivatives, money market and commodity
- Corporate Functions - HR, Payroll, Legal and so on
Banks are struggling to create customer centric digital strategy, partly because it’s too complex to follow and due to the lack of operational agility required to drive such approach and also because many back office functions does not believe that they are part of a holistic customer journey. With disruptive business models and emerging technology innovation, banks can no longer afford to ignore this trend and bring customer value centric digital strategy, just like an NPO selflessly create value to the groups of people they administer to!
