14 Oct Mapping the Banking Customer experience in the digital era

Often our banking customers ask us for the optimal technology stack that enables them to provide a great customer experience. They know that customers in the digital era are fussier then ever, use multiple banks and switch over faster. You often hear the term Omnichannel as a “be all and end all” catchphrase on how to deal with these customers. But emerging market banks are markedly different in nature. Some rely entirely on bank spreads to fuel their profitability. Others have a very specific business model defined by their particular set of users like developmental, micro finance or public sector banks. Still others have specific expertise and niches like trade finance or investment.

Creating a memorable customer experience requires tailored solutions that can greatly vary bank to bank. The key is to know the entire customer experience map so you can customize your customer experience strategy and related technologies according to your niche and strategy. That’s why instead of talking strategic with omnichannel, for this post we thought we would go tactical and use SapinetNitro’s view of what comprises as touch points for a total customer experience for banks. We are using these particular touch points because they comprehensively define validated trends across the spectrum from established to hype.

The key to utilizing these touch points is to use them to along the critical journey from being product centric to customer centric. That in itself requires that digital initiatives and the technologies enabling them are reverse engineered from a robust strategic exercise. The relationship between strategy and technology deserves a blog post on its own but from our experience most emerging market banks have followed an opportunistic growth model resulting in a need for a strategic reboot before embarking on a major digitization push. Once strategy is done, looking at the above touch points one can pick which ones support the strategy most ably. The bank will need to balance boldness and empathy when dealing with touch points closer to hype then established.