Financial institutions who fall short on customer experience tend to lack a sophisticated and well-defined plan for improving customer experience. More importantly, this lack of organization is typically due to a lack of conviction about the efficacy of customer experience improvements.
Customer experience is about so much more than a vague, happy sentiment a customer may or may not feel after an interaction with your financial institution. Customer experience directly correlates with your bottom line, creates a stronger financial foundation for your customers’ lives and opens the door for opportunities for your employees. Consider these five key benefits of taking your customer experience seriously and over-delivering for your customers:
Increased Revenue and Profit
Arguably most importantly for your organization, customer experience directly correlates to your bottom line. Your net promoter score directly aligns with other customer actions such as your likeliness to retain them, your ability to cross-sell products, and the overall profitability of your relationship with that individual.
Happy Customers
As a financial institution, your organization plays a role in the stress (or lack thereof) of your customers’ financial lives. Finances are a leading source of stress among Americans, and your ability to serve as a partner can alleviate that stress and even put customers on a long-term path toward financial prosperity through small, meaningful and sustainable improvements. Think about ways you can marginally help customers in order to improve their overall financial lives.
Increased Customer Base and Referrals
By establishing a base of happy customers, you’ve created the best advertising tool available: organic, enthusiastic promoters of your brand who tell their friends and family about your services. Creating a body of satisfied customers can create a positive snowball effect to help your organization sustainably grow and expand to additional branches and geographies.
Growth Opportunities for Employees
By creating an environment that focuses on customer experience, you can create a plethora of opportunities for your employees. Most notably, financial institutions that deliver on customers experience tend to employ universal bankers, or jack-of-all-trades staff who are able to perform a wide variety of tasks and create a singular, more streamlined experience for customers.
By training universal bankers, you open your staff up to new opportunities for skill acquisition and career growth, which both increases their value to your organization while helping your organization retain staff for longer.
Attractiveness to FinTech Organizations
If your organization does a good job of fine-tuning your customer experience, you set yourself up as an enticing prospect for FinTech organizations to partner with you. By creating a positive CX culture, FinTech organizations anticipate a higher probability of success in a partnership with you, and are more inclined to proactively reach out to your organization for mutually beneficial business plans and partnerships. Attracting talented FinTech organizations opens your organization up to all sorts of new possibilities for technology and improved customer experience.
