Redefining the Drivers of Customer Value Creation

To sustain customers’ recent migration to digital channels, leaders need a channel strategy that aligns customers to appropriate digital channels based on their needs. The strategy should take into account a task’s complexity, and the cost to complete a task within a given channel, to ensure that leaders know when digital channels are the optimal means to address a certain need. Secondly, firms should provide tools (such as chatbots, FAQs and social media platforms) that are easy to navigate and that direct customers to digital channels, when appropriate, Finally leaders should create channel content that focuses on three confidence-building factors that will lead to customers remaining in digital channels: clarity, credibility and confirmation.

Leaders are making future-oriented technology investments that are driving major shifts in how financial services firms create and deliver value for their customers. In the past, value creation was all about providing clients with a great customer experience. As we move into the future, we are seeing a transition toward financial services firms helping customers live their best possible financial life. For instance, leading firms are investing in API-based solutions (enabled by external nonfinancial services partners) to build/integrate new products and services that provide end-to-end customer journey solutions. Firms are also investing in technologies that enable dynamic products that auto-personalize, improve and change in price based on observed customer behavior and data. To engage better with their customers, firms are adopting standard fairness metrics and subpopulation analysis that drive data visibility and increase financial inclusion.

Financial services leaders striving to improve the performance of their self-service channels should focus on 'observing' how customers find and navigate relevant parts of the firm’s websites and applications to identify improvements that will facilitate greater digital self-service. Leaders should have a clear understanding of how long customers expect critical journeys to take and compare those with estimates of how long it takes their organization to deliver a high-quality interaction. The optimal length for each journey should come as close as possible to meeting customer expectations without reducing the quality of the experience. Finally, leaders should refine self-service capabilities by using the same principles to optimize external search and site navigation.

To build a stronger understanding of customer segments, leading firms use customer personas. These personas help firms better understand customer behavior and provide a differentiated experience for various customer segments. Gartner research has found that firms that use personas are 2.4 times more likely to outperform peers in terms of revenue and profit and are far more likely to exceed expectations of customer experience efforts. Built from a mix of qualitative and quantitative data sources, personas uncover gaps in understanding customer needs and challenges. In general, personas aim to understand customers on a personal level, account for psychographic differences within a customer base (for example, attitudes, goals, interest and lifestyle) and unify multiple segments into a manageable number of market targets by solely focusing on the financial and emotional needs and values of key customers.

Financial services leaders often see customer service provision as a cost center within their organizations and fail to realize its potential as a growth driver. Moreover, when developing customer service strategies, leaders often rely on internal assumptions about customer expectations, incomplete or inaccurate data, or metrics (such as NPS) that do not lead to actionable next steps. Instead, Gartner's recommended approach is a CX strategy based around the concept of financial empowerment support (FES). FES is the combination of actions a provider can take that helps customers feel more in control of their financial lives through customer education, enablement and reassurance. Gartner research shows that rooting customer service in FES leads to improved outcomes for both customers and banks, turning customer service into a potential engine for growth.