We recently commissioned an independent survey of financial services customer experience leaders to understand CX performance across the industry. Here are four key learnings that quickly became evident:
Learning 1: 50% do not have a dedicated CX department
There has been much talk in financial services circles of the rise of the Chief Customer Officer role and how these figureheads are key to implementing the structures and ethos necessary to create a customer centered organization.
However, these roles do not exist in many financial services organizations. In fact, in response to the question “Does your organization have a separate CX department?”, 14% said they did and it was headed by a C-level executive, 34% they did and it was not headed by a C-level executive, 46% said they didn’t and it was spread across multiple departments and 6% that didn’t and it was incorporated within another department.
Where they do exist, these teams typically incorporate a significant digital focus, with continual website optimization a critical component of any such strategies. Diagnosing and acting on specific problem areas – whether big or small – in real-time quickly add up and make a significant difference.
Where do you fit in the scale? Do you have a dedicated group headed by a seasoned CX leader driving strategies throughout your organization? Do you have a digital CX optimization team working every day to ensure your apps and websites offer seamless customer experience? If the answer to either of these questions is no, perhaps you need to take your customer experience more seriously. After all, your competitors probably do and they’re the guys you’re battling against every day.
Learning 2: Just over half have not seen measured success for a CX initiative
When asked “Have you seen measured success for a customer experience initiative yet”, 45% said they hadn’t and only 55% said they had.
What’s more, CX investment levels have increased at 69% of financial services businesses and remained the same in 29% over the past year. It has only decreased at 2% of institutions – a tiny proportion. So, clearly, there is a very clear recognition of the power of good CX but a lack of clarity around how to make the changes that have an impact.
What’s the solution? Well, clearly it’ll vary from organization to organization. However, the need for a means to diagnose specific areas requiring attention for improvement across both digital and physical touchpoints is essential, as is a CX measure or barometer with which to make comparisons over time.
Learning 3: It’s time to take mobile seriously
According to our research, CX strategies at almost a quarter (23%) of financial services businesses do not include mobile at all. And only 9% say mobile is currently fully integrated into a broader omnichannel CX strategy. This is consistent with broader data highlighting how very few organizations seem ready for this change in customer behavior. Only 51% of eBusiness professionals are in the ‘mobile-first’ stage of maturity, with a mere 17% believing they are ready to embrace this mobile CX transformation.
Given that more time is now spent looking at smart phone screens rather than TVs and the general trend towards mobile usage, these figures are extremely surprising. The leading financial services businesses that I talk to realize mobile represents a fantastic opportunity to nurture the sorts of long-term relationships with customers that define their business.
I already blogged about how mobile users are also younger and wealthier so if you’re not focusing on it in a big way already, you should be. After all, smart device usage will continue to increase. If you don’t adapt, you’ll get left behind.
How do you stay ahead of the game or, at the very least, ensure you don’t get left behind? Providing your customers with the ability to engage with you about their mobile experience is a crucial first step to identifying the key CX issues that need to be addressed. Taking this insight on board, digesting and then acting on it ensures your mobile offerings deliver what your customers want from them.
Learning 4: Unstructured feedback is valuable but not acted upon
According to our survey, most financial services leaders see value in unstructured feedback in the context of improving CX – be this because it provides a broad benchmark (13%), offers customer insight (35%), helps improve personalization (17%) or it complements structured data (16%). In fact, only 1 in 5 do not collect some form of unstructured customer feedback.
Contrast that with how this same audience of financial services leaders classify their ability to take action on this unstructured feedback. On a scale of 1-5, only 20% give themselves a rating of 4 or 5. It’s clear therefore that many financial services businesses need to implement more efficient systems, structures and processes that enable them to react quickly to issues identified through this data and consistently make the improvements necessary to drive game-changing CX changes.
Want to find out more what financial services CX leaders think about customer experience? The full report “Creating Cutting-Edge Customer Experiences for Financial Services” is available from the OpinionLab website.
