Optimizing Banking Experience in a Digital World

Various banks struggle to provide experience across channels, touchpoints, and devices which needs a seamless connectivity from front-to-back office. Several challenges such as rigid workflows, silos, and fragmented data are in a way of resolving issues. Let us consider an example, customers might open an account online but they may not complete the application without calling in. They would simply move to a bank with an easier process.

Like other several organizations, banks, have been investing tightly in the front office – enhancing mobile apps or improving user interfaces. Since the front-end experience is critical, thus too are the data, processes, and technology that support the journey.

Journey-driven Transformation

 Instead of products, several banks are now acquiring a journey-driven transformation approach that is organized around customers. Qualitative and quantitative data map and user research experiences to the requirements of both employees and customers. This approach fuses agile methodologies, user experience, and design thinking – and intelligent technologies allow visualization, real-time data insights, and measurement.

Experience of the team is continuously improved through digital interventions in several areas like machine learning, dynamic workflow analytics, or artificial intelligence.

Below are few key principles that might help you get started:

• Organize around journeys and customers – Sometimes we map the present journey and recognize systems and processes through to the back office and data, leveraging skills to make efforts measurable. A large bank which is organized around life events, defining journeys, by observing the various products and services, should support the customer experience through that life event. There is a highlighted risk of the switching of a customer to another bank.
• Spread on design thinking – This should be done to understand what is possible. The opportunities and problems can be visually depicted for digital inventions across the front, middle, and back offices.
• Generate a CX measurement framework – Defining the business case and expected return is the best practice to do. You should use two sets of KPIs – one by identifying different levers to measure the journeys and another at the programmatic level by aligning the upfront work. Correlations can be found by combining qualitative and quantitative data. Suppose, correlating attitudinal, transactional, and behavioral data with different analytics from cross channels. Emerging patterns would enable you to become more instinctive and predictive.

Although some banks are executing parts of the approach, so true benefits come from an integrated end-to-end framework. Most of the banks are defining journeys at a customer level and using journey mapping, but execution remains a challenge.

Regional and super-regional banks have not combined their capabilities yet, but they are dabbling with process mapping and journey mapping on the back end. As the digital banks and fintechs are driving towards expansion and cross-selling of digital capabilities, thus the pause button is hit to understand the overall customer experience.

Adoption of journey-driven transformation approach can lead to the enhancement of customer experience, and this is done by several banks.