About 10 years ago, when I took my first banking role with “CX” in the job title, I was constantly answering the question, “what is a CX?” Although my manager was a newly hired SVP reporting directly to the CEO, no one knew what our team did. Worse yet, they didn’t know why we did it. It wasn’t that Bankers didn’t care about their customers, but putting science and rigor behind the customer experience was unheard of then.
Fortunately, if the atmosphere at the CX for Financial Services (CXFS) conference I attended recently is any indicator, times have definitely changed. Bankers and financial professionals have come to embrace all of the tools in the CX tool belt – and our customer are better off for it.
What’s behind this change? It’s as simple as bankers making the move from asking ‘what’ and ‘why’ to exploring ‘how.’ No one at the conference was asking why their credit union, bank, or investment firm needed to improve or design for a great CX. Instead, they wanted to understand how to do it and in which channels it makes the most sense to deliver any given service.
Smart bankers have always used data to drive business decisions – from deposit pricing to loan decisions, and using customer experience data is the new frontier in banking and financial services. We are in a commoditized industry: products, price and policy are roughly the same from bank to bank. What is different is your PEOPLE. It is people who design and deliver memorable experiences. Small changes in how we think about the role people play in banking are key to standing out as a brand that delivers great CX.
I overheard a simple, yet evocative, statement that embodies the shift to a CX culture. To paraphrase:
The person at your bank who used to be called the ‘Mortgage Product Manager’ should be called ‘The Home Buying Journey Champion’ if you’re serious about being customer-centric. No one wants a mortgage – they want a home.
Just stop and think about that power of that …
A top strategic priority among global banking leaders is to improve the customer journey and deliver a better customer experience – so it should come as no surprise that the most popular CXFS sessions were about:
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• Understanding and perfecting the customer journey
• How to reduce customer effort, and why that’s important
• What it means to design seamless omnichannel experiences
• Creating a company-wide CX culture, and empowering employees to deliver on that culture
Banking is still a pretty simple business when we really think about it. At the end of the day, banks and bankers should spend time getting to know a client or customer, solve for their specific needs, and help them reach their goals. Customer experience data and insights should inform every step – ensuring that customers feel heard, understood and valued.
Stay tuned! In my upcoming blogs, I’ll take a closer look at some of the hottest topics in banking and financial services CX, and the science of customer experience.
Image source: Getty Images
