Unified Customer Experience: A Guide for Financial Service

For financial services companies, success hinges on consistently meeting customer expectations. Trust plays a pivotal role in client satisfaction and long-term loyalty. Consistency and accuracy in communication are essential. Experts at Deloitte found that 70% of consumers consider a consistent multi-channel experience as extremely or very important when selecting a primary bank.

In today’s multi-channel world, that can be hard to deliver. An evolving array of digital channels is supplementing traditional call centers, mail, and branch interactions. That’s a good thing insofar as it enables companies to enhance their interactions with customers, but it also introduces substantial complexity.

When customers don’t get a consistent experience, or when their choices are limited, that can lead to frustration, and eventually to customer attrition. Today’s consumers want the ability to seamlessly switch from one channel to another without missing a beat, moving from a web-based chatbot to a live agent, for example, without having to explain their problem all over again.

There is a very real financial impact to all this. According to research by Forrester, a 1-point improvement in a bank’s customer experience (CX) index results in between $92M and $123M of additional revenue, depending on the size of the organization. Accenture estimates that improved relationships with primary customers add as much as 20% to overall revenue.

The High Cost of Disjointed Communications to Financial Services Companies

Siloed, disjointed systems remain a problem at many financial institutions, making it hard to achieve coherent customer communications. Problems range from inconsistent branding and messaging across product lines to disjointed interactions and customer communications that lack personalization and relevance to the target recipient.

Research reveals that 66% of consumers will switch brands if their customer experience isn’t personalized. That number is even higher in some regions. 90% of customers in Hong Kong, for example, will jump ship if their experience lacks personalization. More and more customers are dividing their loyalty among multiple financial institutions. A survey conducted by Accenture found that 59% of customers recently acquired a financial services product from an organization other than their main bank.

There are also substantial internal costs associated with disjointed communications. Banks that struggle with multiple systems must manage duplicate processes, leading to redundant infrastructure and inconsistent processes. Siloed systems often require companies to manage multiple copies of the same data. That makes compliance more difficult and expensive and hampers efforts to maintain a single, consistent view of the enterprise.

5 Benefits of a CCM Platform

A unified customer communications management (CCM) platform breaks down the silos between systems, processes, and products to provide a single, holistic approach to managing each client’s experience. Let’s explore the five benefits of a unified CCM platform for financial services organizations:

• Increased agility. The mix and relevance of various digital channels continue to evolve rapidly. A CCM platform makes it easier to add new channels while also maintaining consistent messaging and branding. That helps you beat the competition, bringing innovations to market rapidly, and at a very low cost. A unified CCM also makes it easier to design, approve, and roll out communications for new products and services. Using workflows, business rules, and templated communications, a CCM platform enables banks to achieve rapid time-to-market in positioning themselves as innovators among their peers.
• Increased customer loyalty. A consistent, personalized experience engenders brand loyalty among today’s consumers. In the financial services sector, a unified CCM platform offers particular benefits for the customer onboarding process. Features like personalized interactive videos make it easier for customers to get to know your bank and avail themselves of the services you offer. That creates a strong first impression, setting the stage for a healthy long-term relationship.
• New revenue opportunities. A fully integrated CCM platform helps financial institutions grow their revenue identifying and capitalizing on cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Using advanced customer analytics, banks can identify key buying triggers and then use automated workflows to drive personalized offers. This helps you build lifetime value for each customer, and it significantly enhances the client’s personalization experience. 
• Proactive real-time communications. Customers appreciate hearing about events that directly impact their wallets. To help prevent overdrafts, for example, financial institutions can send user alerts via SMS text messages, in-app notifications, email, or recorded voice messages. A unified CCM platform enables each customer to specify their preferred channels of communication, as well as the types of messages they want to receive. Real-time alerts also serve to reduce the costs associated with payment card fraud.
• Simpler, faster compliance. Privacy, security, and compliance remain top concerns in the financial services industry. A unified CCM platform provides a central repository for outbound messages, including specific versions for each jurisdiction where necessary. That eliminates the need to maintain numerous copies of the same document in parallel, a practice that often leads to errors and inconsistencies. Streamlined review and approval processes make it faster and easier to get things done, as well as to manage the audit process and respond to regulatory inquiries. Centralized control, automated backup and disaster recovery, data masking, and PII protection enhance overall privacy and security, reducing compliance risk to your organization.

Taking Action

A hosted managed service CCM platform enables financial institutions to fast-track the process of streamlining and rationalizing customer communications. That means faster time to value, with increased agility, improved customer loyalty, and accelerated revenue growth. It puts your organization on the path to simpler processes, lower costs, faster audits, and rapid time-to-market.

Precisely’s EngageOne^TM software offers real-time API-based integration with your core transaction systems, enabling you to personalize and automate event-driven communication based on your customers’ data. It empowers your organization to master an array of channels, quickly responding to the changing needs of your customers.

Want to learn more? Download your complimentary copy of our white paper, From Fragmented Communications to Unified Experiences: A Guide for Financial Service.