Successful Multi-channel Financial Service Providers Think User Experience

by on 12/01/2011 Comments Off
In a multichannel world, the onus to deliver business results shifts from people to digital channels. Thoughtful UX design with high-quality UX engineering adds revenue, improves margins and accrues immense customer goodwill.

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We think the multi-channel world can be visualised in the following perspective:

  • Customer-owned Channels: PC, Mobile, and Touch Pad devices that are owned and operated by the customer, and over which a financial service provider has almost no control.
  • Remote-access Channels: Contact centers, Virtual Branches, & Remote services Kiosks, where hardware and software is organization-controlled, but the in-person human element is missing.
  • On-premise Channels: This includes internal systems & tools that empower and enable the organization’s staff as well as in-branch self-serve touch-points that customers use.

Clearly all these channels involve very different media, present very different usage scenarios and require extremely cohesive thinking in order to provide consistent, meaningful and high-quality services.

In such a world, CIOs & Financial technology owners can leverage User-Centered Design Thinking at many levels. For example, they can ask themselves:

How can the Customer Touch Points they operate…

  • Deliver services in consistent and easy-to-use ways?
  • Make meaning, create context and ensure repeat engagement with deep personalization?
  • Persuade the customer to notice, choose and consume new offerings?

How can their IT Systems for Staff & Affiliates…

  • Enable delivery of thoughtful, personalized services to their end customers?
  • Help get routine tasks done with speed and great accuracy?
  • Make work more satisfying, by absorbing the intuitive capabilities workers already access on their own devices.

As growth partners to business owners, how can they…

  • Significantly improve margins of services delivered over existing infrastructure?
  • Help Managers drive higher adoption rates of new offerings?
  • Provide Leadership teams with a real-time, interactive, actionable picture of the business— onsite and on the go?
These are just a few pieces of the larger multi-channel financial services mosaic. But getting them right can prove to be very valuable. In fact, according to a study by the Forrester Group “Customer Experience boosts revenue. Modest improvements can bring in $177 M to $311 M per year” (May 2010.)
If you are a product vendor, or a technology owner at a financial services firm, how do you think of today’s multi-channel scenario? What factors need to be considered and what are the big challenges you foresee?
We will love to know your views…