Blog: Personalization: filling the expectation gap

Have you quantified the value of personalization in your business? With decreasing loyalty to one service provider, there is no denying that the topic of personalization is surfacing to the top of strategic conversations in almost every area of financial services. With consumers willing to pay a 16% price premium [1] for a better customer experience, delivering personalization in a way that’s truly meaningful to the consumer can not only foster loyalty but also deliver quantifiable ROI.

Creating a single view of the customer
Those consumers with only one financial services provider in today’s competitive market are very rare, with most people engaging with multiple services from multiple brands in order to access the best rates and product offerings across the market. This can inhibit the ability to create a single view of the customer which is consistent and fully informed with relevant data. However most financial services providers have huge amounts of data available to begin this process and often the challenge lies in making sense of where to begin rationalising this information. Rather than trying to address every consumer demand at once, it can often be more valuable to simplify the data and focus on a few core areas that will deliver the most visible and relevant results for the end-user first.  As a result, a single view of the customer can start to be developed which then learns and adapts over time as new data is integrated further.

Stripping back the noise
Rationalising data is one challenge, but it can also be difficult to decide how to use this information to deliver personalization in the most meaningful way possible. Financial service providers must aim to strip out complexity and provide a powerful and emotive message that can be delivered across all customer touch points, focusing on adding maximum value directly to the end user. In doing so, there is the opportunity to strip back the noise and become truly relevant to the customers everyday lives.

Personal and genuine customer engagement is key
Once this has been achieved, you can then leverage and analyse the valuable contextualised customer behavioural data profiles to create personal and genuine one-to-one engagement with customers across all channels, including in-branch and online. Real-time information can be used to personalise product offerings for customers and demonstrate genuine value-added services in action. For this to work, bank branch and call centre staff must be a part of the personalization story and have access to these insights to put human interaction at the centre of multi-channel offerings. In turn, customers will see the brand as a trusted advisor that puts all the buzzwords to one side and truly focuses upon their needs.

Knowledge is power
After building a solid foundation to deliver your personalised customer engagement journey, it is imperative to maintain an unrelenting focus on analysing progress in order to continue to evolve. The rising use of technology, AI and predictive analytics within retail banking is making this process easier across the industry and helping both traditional and new providers deliver the types of services consumers have come to expect as standard. With 80% of consumers more likely to buy from brands which deliver personalised services [2] it’s never been more important to set in stone an organisation-wide strategic commitment to deliver a truly customer first approach across all touch points. 

If both new and traditional financial service providers don’t demonstrate a willingness to learn and evolve their personalization strategies, they will become redundant in the modern fast-paced and data driven society. In such a competitive environment, no one can afford to ignore this key differentiator for the future.

First Appeared in Finextra:
[1] Experience is everything: Here’s how to get it right, PWC, 2018
[2] Epsilon, 2018