How Financial
Services Firms
Compete on Customer
Experience and Win
Survive in today's competitive marketplace
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How Financial Services Firms
Compete on Customer Experience and Win
The digital era is forcing financial services companies to significantly accelerate
their pace of innovation to meet the expectations of the empowered
customer and survive in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
76% of affluent millennials
are open to trying
financial offerings from
non-financial brands
Since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, customer experience has played a key, strategic role in
helping banking and investment firms differentiate themselves, regain customer trust and share
of assets. According to a 2014 survey by Ernst & Young, customer experience is the most influential
factor in the decision to open or close bank accounts, more so than fees, rates, locations, and
convenience. But the needs and expectations of customers are ever-changing, requiring financial
firms to be quicker and more nimble in evolving their customer experiences than ever before.
great customer experience yields greater rewards
Companies delivering superior customer experience are reaping the financial rewards. The
more satisfied a customer is, the lower cost they are to service, as well as the more likely
they are to remain a customer, buy more offerings and recommend your firm to others.
A recent study by Medallia Analysis revealed that customers who had the best experiences spent 140%
more compared to those who had the poorest experiences. However, a 2011 Customer Experience
Impact (CEI) report published by Oracle stated that while 86% of buyers are willing to pay more
for a better customer experience, only 1% feel companies consistently meet their expectations.
Unfortunately, U.S. financial institutions too often fall into that 99% category, as cited in the 2016
FIS Consumer Banking PACE Index™, leaving money on the table and customers on the lookout for
better alternatives. Millennials, in particular, pose a challenge to traditional financial services firms
seeking their business. According to joint research conducted by Hootsuite and LinkedIn, more than
76% of affluent millennials are open to trying financial offerings from non-financial brands such as
Apple and Google; two brands that excel at delivering exceptional digital customer experiences.
The failure of any firm to deliver on customer experience stems from an inability to organize and
operate internally in a way that identifies and reacts to the needs of customers quickly and consistently.
the 3 barriers to delivering great customer experience
Millennials and other digitally-driven consumers are forcing financial institutions to
dramatically change the way they deliver products. This trend is happening in virtually
every industry, but nowhere more dramatically than in financial services. A slew of startups
are challenging the customer experience status quo by taking a digital or mobile-first
approach to personal finance and attracting customers (and their assets) quickly.
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Financial institutions know they need to respond quickly. However, as research from
eConsultancy in association with Adobe highlights, it's difficult for established institutions
to capitalize on these changes:
"The increasing complexity of the customer
experience, entrenched organizational
structures, and a lack of overall strategy
emerge as the top barriers to improving the
customer experience."
barrier #1: complexity of customer experience
Designing a cohesive, end-to-end customer experience across all of the various physical and digital
touchpoints is inherently complex. Companies are learning that the customer journey is difficult to
predict as consumers are empowered to forge their own paths in the digital era. This also makes it
challenging to orchestrate the best customer experience across various offline and online interactions.
barrier #2: siloed organizational structure
Many financial services firms are still operating with organizational structures created in
the pre-digital era, where different departments owned varying pieces of the customer
experience. These practices replicate the linear processes and handoffs of the industrial
age, resulting in siloed departments with separate objectives, plans, and budgets.
In theory, all departments will agree on the importance of delivering a good customer experience;
but in practice, it’s very difficult to achieve. Each department develops separate strategic priorities
and tactics for execution, which ultimately leads to inconsistent customer communications
and interactions. Sometimes many teams within a department are similarly disconnected.
For example, within marketing, different team members own different communication channels.
There is the brand marketing team, customer communications team, the social media team, the email
and content team, the mobile team and so on. The result of a siloed organizational structure translates
to a fragmented customer experience across the various touch points that different departments own.
barrier #3: lack of overall strategy
A siloed organizational structure contributes to the next challenge:
No single vision and strategy for customer experience. Because no one person or department
owns the full customer experience, the entire organization lacks a shared vision and
strategy to align and execute against. Delivering superior customer experiences is often a
mandate from the top, but is rarely translated into a shared vision at the execution level.
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Breaking down barriers to deliver a seamless
and satisfying customer experience
unify behind a shared vision
Defining an overall customer experience vision and strategy is step one. It’s not enough to just
say the company is customer-centric. Great customer experience should be defined based on
the value you deliver as seen through your customer’s eyes. A well-defined customer experience
strategy will unite the entire company and connect your people to a larger purpose.
That said, it’s important to note that a common mistake companies make is to assign one team to
map out the customer experience in a conference room and then assume the business will get it right
the first time. The customer experience is dynamic and offline methods for capturing and sharing are
too static and become quickly outdated. What’s needed is one universal place where teams connect
to visualize the current and ideal end-to-end customer experience to collectively make it better.
Everyone owns and is accountable for delivering great customer experience. An overall
customer experience vision that is shared across the company also breaks down departmental
barriers. According to eConsultancy, companies who rate themselves as “advanced” in
customer experience maturity say that the entire organization is responsible for customer
experience, not one group or department. Key stakeholders for each department should
meet regularly to ensure all departments are executing on the shared vision and strategy.
There needs to be greater transparency between departments to break down any barriers
to communication. Greater transparency and collaboration across departments will help
companies more rapidly connect the dots in solving the complexity and consistency challenge.
employ a design-driven approach
Experts from McKinsey & Company write, “Using empathy to put customers, clients, and end users at
the center of the problem-solving equation is the foundation of design thinking.” By using a designdriven approach, companies can transform the way they develop products and services, innovating to
the betterment of the customer.
“Using empathy to put customers, clients, and end
users at the center of the problem-solving equation
is the foundation of design thinking.”
According to eConsultancy, companies that value design and creativity are much more likely to be
leaders in customer experience. In fact, the DMI Design Value Index shows that design-led companies
like Intuit, Apple, Ford, and Walt Disney have maintained significant stock market advantage the past
10 years, outperforming the S&P by an extraordinary 228%.
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When Bank of America undertook a user-centered redesign of its process for account registration,
online-banking traffic rose by 45 percent. Using design methods to better understand customer
needs, as well as to reframe complex problems, is leading to valuable insights that constitute strategic
competitive advantages.
Bluescape helps financial
services firms win on
customer experience
A recent survey of design-thinking experts in financial services revealed that continuous involvement
from decision makers can be a key success factor when executing design thinking projects. It also
suggests that design thinking benefits from the participation of individuals from different backgrounds
and parts of a financial services firm. These findings point to the importance of executive buy-in and
collaboration to a design-driven approach. So how do we overcome those barriers to enable a designdriven approach and achieve unified customer experience?
How Bluescape helps financial services
firms win on customer experience
The challenges to delivering a great customer experience stem from the fragmentation of
people, processes, and technology. A company cannot deliver a cohesive end-to-end customer
experience without a cohesive strategy, team, process, and platform to support it. Financial
services companies need a better way to connect people, streamline processes, and more easily
integrate the numerous technologies powering customer interactions and relationships.
Bluescape is a visual collaboration solution that helps financial services companies design a better
customer experience faster by removing the operational barriers that inhibit unified experience design.
how bluescape solves the customer experience complexity problem:
•T
he siloed structure of financial services firms prevents teams from seeing the
complete picture of all customer touch points, and therefore hampers their ability
to create a seamless and satisfying experience. Bluescape provides a platform that
gives all of the stakeholders within your firm the complete picture. This enables
you to see (visually) exactly what your customer is experiencing and what that
experience feels like without the distortion that comes with fragmentation.
how bluescape breaks down organizational silos:
•S
iloed teams are a product of certain operational structures, whether the structure is a physical
office location, a certain technology platform, or imposed reporting structure. Bluescape’s
virtual workspace breaks down organizational silos by connecting and engaging teams across
locations, disciplines, devices and systems. The platform empowers people from multiple
departments to codevelop a new user experience in real-time from beginning to end.
•T
he visual nature of Bluescape gives teams a universal language that keeps everyone
on the same page with a shared customer experience vision and strategy.
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•B
eyond just a single project, Bluescape captures, shares and preserves all
the content and context so teams can connect the dots and see the big
picture of customer experience design in an entirely new way.
how bluescape fixes the disconnect between strategy & execution:
•B
luescape is the only digital platform where all stakeholders can visualize the entire
end-to-end customer experience and participate in its evolution over time. It provides
a 30,000 foot view of every touchpoint so teams can see the overall strategy come to
life. Yet, at the same time, it can zoom in on individual products and projects, down
to the most granular detail, so nothing is missed. Bluescape closes for good the gap
between strategy and execution by putting them quite literally on the same plane.
See how you can design a better, more cohesive customer experience faster with Bluescape.
Talk to a Bluescape expert today.