Customer experience has emerged as an essential consideration for businesses in all industries – particularly in recent years. According to Mordor Intelligence, the CX management market is set to reach a value of around $27.13 billion by 2026 alone.
For some time, financial services companies have struggled somewhat to embrace the latest technology and innovations for CX. However, simple changes in the CX roadmap can make a huge difference to team operations. For instance, personalisation at scale afforded by digital banking is enough to drive up to 15% revenue growth for financial services companies.
Consumers have a huge range of options for banking and financial services in the modern landscape, which means companies need to work harder to ensure ongoing brand loyalty. Exploring how customer experience can drive positive transformation in the financial services industry could be the key to success for many groups going forward.
The Possibilities of CX in Financial Services
Financial services companies, like brands in most industries, rely on excellent customer experience to stay on top of the competition. With the right CX solutions, companies can gather more information about their customers, deliver better outcomes, and become more competitive. Whether you’re a bank, credit company, brokerage, or insurance brand, the right CX solution is essential.
CX in financial services has grown increasingly important since the pandemic, as consumers have rapidly shifted towards digital services for banking and financial support, companies have had to transform. It’s not enough just to have a good phone line and in-branch assistants, financial groups need self-service solutions, AI, and digital channels too.
In a pre-pandemic world, a modern financial services contact centre enhanced by AI and analytics capabilities would have a significant competitive advantage. Now, these features are essential. Banks and financial services need to adapt, looking at:
- Agent support: Employees in the modern financial services landscape are under pressure to support a wide range of customers, through different channels. On top of this, these employees are working more frequently from home and in remote locations, making the need for new tools and services essential. Additional support for agents in the form of all-in-one communication and collaboration tools, automation, and AI will be essential
- Omnichannel service: Customers now want their customer service in the financial services landscape to be just as efficient and flexible as it is anywhere else. This means investing in everything from online apps to self-service tools to make life easier for your customers
- Security: Banking and financial companies are under a lot of pressure to stay compliant with extremely high standards from a security perspective. Implementing new tools into the contact centre, like biometric systems for recognising customers, could give clients more peace of mind when handling their finances in the new world
- Agent attrition: In any contact centre environment, attrition and agent turnover are widespread issues. However, in the financial landscape, where conversations are growing increasingly complex, this issue can be even more problematic. The key to improving CX in many locations will be ensuring that employees remain engaged, empowered, and supportive on an end-to-end basis
Trends Driving CX in the Financial Services Space
Excellent customer service has long been an essential component of keeping businesses in any industry running smoothly. However, in a highly competitive, regulated, and complex industry like financial services, teams need to innovate.
The pandemic emerged as one of the biggest driving factors pushing companies to innovate for 2021, with countless financial brands making updates to everything from their customer service apps to their security standards. Some of the biggest trends driving CX innovation in financial services include:
- Total Experience: Total experience is a concept which asks companies to look beyond customer experience or agent experience and consider how everything in their ecosystem works together. With total experience, brands begin to think about how the tools empowering their workforce in the remote environment drive better outcomes for clients, and how staff in and outside of the office need to work together. Such an approach is growing increasingly important as customer queries become more complex, and automation tools deal with more common questions and concerns
- Automation and AI: Speaking of automation, this disruptive technology is having a significant impact on the way financial services environments operate. Companies need to automate things like administration tasks and data management, so human agents are available to handle the empathetic and creative customer interactions that matter most. AI and automation workflows are likely to be an increasingly important part of CCaaS
- Analytics: Financial services environments deal with customer interactions through long and complex journeys. In-depth analytics make it easier to understand the connections you have with your clients through every stage of the interaction. You can even use the data collected with AI apps to highlight potential trends in everything from banking practices to investment opportunities
The Challenges to Overcome in CX for Financial Services
While many challenges may impact financial services companies during digital transformation initiatives, the biggest issue for many will be security and compliance in a changing landscape. Even as team members begin to move to remote working and hybrid practices, companies will need to ensure they’re following the right guidelines to keep everyone secure.
As we move ahead into the future of CX in financial services, we’re likely to see more brands investing in tools designed specifically to make teams and professionals more secure. This could include spending more on AI systems, VPN networks, or secured data environments.
Biometrics and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly common in the financial services landscape, as companies turn to AI to help them tackle common issues like fraud and account theft. Already, many major brands are experimenting with these useful tools.
Making the Right CX Investment
As we look ahead to a new future in financial services, it’s becoming increasingly important for companies to ensure they’re making the right investment in CX solutions. Comprehensive CCaaS technology which enables customer service in an omnichannel cloud will be an important first step. However, companies will also need to look into other innovations too, like analytics and AI for tracking the customer journey.
