Jose A. Diaz Infante
The banking industry faces a double challenge. Due to regulations and risks, Financial processes have become extremely complex. Banks today are always on the lookout for the next regulation to comply with coming out of the nascent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
At the same time, CIOs in the industry are planning to allocate a larger share of their IT budgets to mobile and online initiatives, with 14% reporting these two initiatives as their number one priorities for 2015.
The combination of these two trends sees IT budgets in the banking industry going up 4.3% in 2015 over 2014, according to recent findings by research firm Ovum.
Consequently, the customer journey has become a major focus for banks trying to compete for the growing online market being driven by millennials (those born between 1981 and 2000).
The Banking Customer Journey
So what is the customer journey?
At every click, swipe and button pressed, banks can learn more about who a user is and how to guide and take them to the next step of the purchase journey.
The journey begins the moment the customer enters the bank home page looking for a retail-banking product (loan, savings, investment advice, etc). The journey finishes when the customer petition has been approved.
Customer Analytics has become a key differentiator in the industry. During the customer journey a bank tries to get as much insight as possible on their customer. This includes:
- Product selection
- The page path customers follow
- Customer information (e.g. demographics, location)
- Customer behavior
There are several new and existing technologies that can be integrated in the origination and application process. Technologies like the ones mentioned below should be used to complement banking portals.
- Demandbase to understand from which companies are visitors coming
- Oracle BlueKai to further understand the customer demographics
- Rocketfuel (X+1) to further understand the customer profile and dynamically serve custom content and cross-sell products. (Customize page content depending on who is looking at the screen)
- Adobe Sitecatalyst (Omniture) to understand the customer journey through the portals (Domain metrics, # visits, page views)
Powered by the intelligent use of these technologies, leading financial institutions can react based on a deeper understanding of their customers.
A great example of the use of big data is Bank of America. They leverage transaction and propensity models to determine which customers have a credit card or mortgage that could benefit from refinancing at a competitor, and they then make an offer when the customer contacts the bank online or through a call center or branch channels.
Avoid These Customer Journey Mistakes
- Treating all customers the same: Strategic thinking when defining content for consumers. Understand how different customer segments engage with products.
- Implementing technology around processes without taking into consideration the customer’s point of view and main interaction points. What drives the journey the technology or the process?
- Steering complex navigating routes, irrelevant content and failure to test products. Ensure, to the extent possible, a seamless customer experience. Always test, test, and test further.
To learn more about how you can implement customer journey technologies to improve user experience, and avoid these customer journey "no-no's," check out Softtek’s Banking and Financial services solutions.
