The Art of Banking: How to Accelerate Your Customer Journey
Blog: Appian Insight
Where are bankers finding the inspiration to drive customer-focused innovation? The leaders are combining digital technology and human psychology as they strive to perfect the art of banking.
What’s New in Banking Technology?
Google “technology innovation in the financial services industry,” and you get more than 200 million results. Hits range from mobile technology that reportedly can save the banking industry $1.5 billion annually to block chain technology that is emerging as a way to let companies transact without a central authority. McKinsey advises banks should be monitoring innovations from five types of players: business-model disruptors, process innovators, technology start-ups outside the financial sector, digital banks, and platform attackers from other industries, such as e-tailing.
Some technology innovations will have the capacity to radically reinvent banking; others will impact how banks currently do business, and a few will accomplish both. If bankers want to find those few, they will need to start with the customer motivation.
A Commercial Banker Bucket List
So what do bankers need to do to play to customer motivation? What are the most important customer concerns that present opportunities for technology response these days?
The challenge for commercial bankers is cultivating the customer relationship. Establishing a strong customer relationship is everything, and care must then extend throughout the customer journey lifecycle.
With the customer journey as a focus, here’s my take on what a banker “bucket list” might include:
- Deal with the loss of customer confidence that came with the economic market upheaval
- Capture and retain clients who have changing attitudes and expectations
- Deliver to customers who are demanding both speed AND personalized service
Read on for some artful approaches bankers should take to ‘check off’ the list.
Reimagine meaningful customer relationships
Bankers need to reimagine how to create effective customer relationships in today’s environment. For the mega banks, and the banks who inherited customer accounts from them during the market turmoil, dealing with customer confidence means restoring positive experiences. These experiences in the past were often created by in-person personal relationships and interactions with key relationship managers. Now, innovative technology can be used to help achieve these objectives.
For example, Commerce Bank offers an array of sophisticated financial products delivered with high-quality, personal customer service. They use the Appian digital platform for their Commercial Action Center to enable their relationship managers to be more efficient, with improved exception handling and compliance. That allows greater focus on building and maintaining the customer relationship.
Create value by unifying information
To capture and retain customers, you must truly “know your customer” (not just in the regulatory sense) and match service to their needs. Changing expectations for banking require that the customer experience needs to be consistent and coordinated across channels. It also means that internal processes and interactions must be enabled to support not only the new omni-channel world, but also the increasingly complex compliance environment… all from the customer perspective. At the end of the day, customer-centric views are the key to success and here is where Appian’s digital platform and its ability to unify data shines.
First Republic Bank uses Appian to personalize the customer journey and deliver superior customer service. They have deployed eight core customer-centric applications, with process flows and data integration that allow bank employees to capture information on a single interface, creating a more collaborative and engaged customer experience.
Win the customer at digital speed
Banks have always been concerned with how to satisfy different customer demographic segments. Today’s changing customer demographics and demands for speed and personalized service mean increased challenges to ensure a satisfying experience. Improving on-boarding means better service for new customers, and the right new products and services for current customers.
Commercial bankers operate in a highly complex environment that requires the ability to provide products and services to customers that can be quickly and cost effectively configured to their requirements and needs. With Appian technology, bankers can take advantage of immediate on-boarding improvements and advance their digital transformation strategy. Check out this new eBook to learn more if you “Want to Accelerate your Customer Journey?”
The Bankers Challenge
It’s clear that banks are doing some interesting and artful things with technology these days. But what are the truly important technology-enabled “bucket list” innovations? To my mind, it will be those few that focus on the customer to deliver both immediate and strategic improvement. That’s how to win #thebankerschallenge !
Director of Industry Marketing
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