This is where a scientific approach may not be deemed compatible or effective. Much of the data that institutions turn to can prove helpful in providing a broad picture of customer satisfaction in the longer term but would be of little use over the timeframes that banks generally work to.

Banks which perform well on net promoter score (NPS), for example, are shown to have higher revenue over a ten-year period. This, however, is difficult to demonstrate over the course of a month or a quarter.

This means buy in for platforms and services designed to monitor and optimise customer engagement is hampered by key decisions makers who are not interested in anything which won’t generate measurable short-term results.

This brings to the fore the question of how banks can offer value to its customers in such a way that would increase revenue streams, even it would not be recognisable or measurable in the short term.
Even something as tangible as retention can prove difficult to measure, as customer habits change and are more likely to use multiple different providers for their different needs.

This may suggest then that financial institutions need to take a far broader approach to measuring customer experience – one more comparable to an art than a science.

Human beings subconsciously make decisions about social situations and interactions with colleagues or strangers every day without the need to see figures and data. If this is true of personal relationships, it could apply to business relationships and so could be an approach that banks should consider taking.

To this end, the wider aim should be to transcend from the present transactional relationship which financial institutions share with their customers.

Customers’ expectations of their banks are based around completing transactions: if they ask for ‘A’, they’ll get ‘B’. This works perfectly fine until the day the bank cannot give the customer ‘B’, which could see this sort of relationship undermined.

There would be less risk of this if a relationship is built on the additional value that customers receive, rather than the bank’s ability to perform basic functions and fulfil simple requests.

This will require a change in how prominent frameworks such as customer lifetime value are perceived and bring to the fore the cultural and behavioural changes required to change how relationships are maintained.

Taking the economic climate that we should be prepared for in the ensuing years, consumers are likely to be engaged with areas of their financial picture that they may have given less attention to previously.

Some will be more actively monitoring their credit score and eligibility for lending. Others may be looking to take advantage of any fall in property value to buy their first home and will want to be alerted to prices in their local area. Clients in the mass affluent segment with more disposable income meanwhile may find value in alerts around inflation, base interest rates and stock markets indexes.

The more value customers are offered, the more data they will be happy to share with their provider, which would, in turn, allow for even greater personalisation of products and services, creating a virtuous circle.

This webinar focuses on:

• How value is to be measured and how improvements in the customer experience can be made more tangible
• The technology that can move the art of the possible in creating value for customers
• The utopia of shifting the customer relationship from transactional to transformational

 Speakers:

• Gary Wright - Head of Research, Finextra [Moderator]
• Mariela Hunter - Head of Consumer Bank Strategy, Citizens Bank
• Jim Ford - Payment Consultant
• Chelsea Lawley - Head of Financial Services Solutions, NGDATA
   

> Watch the webinar now