By Sarah Carver, Head of Digital at Delta Capita
Customer experience is everything – but to stay ahead of the curve, financial organisations may need to reinvent their digital experience flow.
Customer experience is increasingly becoming the sole differentiator between competitors across industries, and finance is no exception. In fact, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. As more and more consumers and businesses back up their demand with hard dollars, it’s clear that if you want to survive and thrive, a seamless customer experience is crucial.
But what does this mean for financial organisations dealing with a bundle of uncoordinated legacy applications, disjointed customer flows and competing priorities of what to prioritise their digital spend on? And how do you juggle those priorities? There is the obvious, no regrets spend for the core customer journeys already in the roadmap but how about the isolated processes within different flows which consume a large amount of time for both the customer service teams and result in a frustrating and complex customer journey?
How to reinvent your digital experience
So how does one go about upending their current setup to create a cohesive digital experience for their clients? It’s simpler than you think. Firms need a modular tool that connects their existing applications and efficiently serves their customer flow.
To reinvent your digital experience, it really only takes four main steps:
- Assess your customer flow
First things first: You need to understand what you have. Before you go out and purchase any new software, you need to take stock of your current customer flow and the applications that supplement it. It can help to map your customer’s entire journey and include as many touchpoints with different teams and systems as possible (and even touch points outside of the organisation flow to truly understand the customer’s true journey. This will help you better understand the actual scope of your customer flow and identify any potential gaps or unmet needs.
- Identify gaps
You will end up finding two kinds of gaps: Gaps in the customer journey and missing applications. The first issue can be resolved by adding connections from one part of the process to the next or creating a new touchpoint.
Meanwhile, if you find that applications are missing or that you can automate a manual task, you’ll need to develop the missing piece in-house or find a technology plug-in or vendor to help. Generally, in-house solutions tend to take longer to develop and can be expensive and/or difficult to maintain. Whereas a third party solution can be quickly implemented and has often been developed and robustly tested to solve for a very specific pain point. Keep in mind that whatever solutions you come up with must be compliant with regulations and be compatible with your current apps, website and customer touchpoints.
- Connect your applications
Finally, you’ll want to connect your applications. Often, the most cost-effective way to do this is to find a self-contained solution that can handle your customer flow and legacy applications while filling the gaps.
When it comes to choosing a new customer service platform, there are a few things you’ll want to look for:
- Reduced handling time
- High-level customer support
- Enhanced data collection and analytics
- Designed for both outbound and inbound communication
- On brand and seamless user experience
- Review your progress
Depending on the platform you select, you may have access to advanced data and performance analytics. This is especially useful for measuring the success of your new, connected platform, and helping you diagnose any remaining bottlenecks. Ideally, you’ll have shifted your resources from repetitive and costly operations to simple routine maintenance and review and refocus them on value added activities. All while ensuring the end user experience is on point and your customers are happy.
