Demystifying Digital – the importance of Customer Journey Mapping…(2/3)

Introduction to Customer Journey Mapping…

The core challenge many Banks have is their ability to offer a unified customer experience for banking services across different touch points. The lack of such a unified experience negatively impacts the quality of the overall banking experience.

Thus, Customer Journey Mapping refers to the process of creating a visual depiction of a customers adoption and usage of banking products across different channels or touch points(branch,mobile,phone,chat,email etc). The journey provides dynamic & realtime insight into the total customer lifetime value (CLV) as the person has progressed in her or his life journey. The goal of the customer journey mapping is to provide the bank personnel with a way of servicing the customer better while increasing the bank’s net economic value from servicing this customer.

The result of the journey mapping process is to drive overall engagement model from the customers perspective and not solely the Banks internal processes.

Banks may be curious as to why they need a new approach to customer centricity? Quite simple, just consider the sheer complexity for signing up for new banking products such as checking or savings accounts or receiving credit for a simple checking deposit. At many banks these activities can take a couple of days. Products with higher complexity like home mortgage applications can take weeks to process even for those consumers with outstanding credit. Consumers are beginning to constantly compare these slow cycle times to the realtime service they commonly obtain using online services such as Amazon or Apple Pay or Google Wallet or Airbnb or even FinTechs. For internal innovation to flourish, customer centric mindset rather than an internal process centric mindset is what is called for at most incumbent Banks.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has proposed a six part program for Banks to improve their customer centricity as a way of driving increased responsiveness and customer satisfaction[1]. This is depicted in the below illustration.

1. Invest in intuitive interfaces for both customer & internal stakeholder interactions–  Millenials who use services like Uber, Facebook, Zillow, Amazon etc in their daily lives are now very vocal in demanding a seamless experience across all of their banking services using digital channels.  The first component of client oriented thinking is to provide UI applications that smoothly facilitate products that reflect individual customers lifestyles, financial needs & behavioral preferences. The user experience will offer different views to business users at various levels in the bank – client advisors, personal bankers, relationship managers, brach managers etc.  The second component is to provide a seamless experience across all channels (mobile, eBanking, tablet, phone etc) in a way that the overall journey continuous and non-siloed. The implication is that clients should be able to begin a business transaction in channel A and be able to continue them in channel B where it makes business sense.
2. Technology Investments – The biggest technology investments in ensuring a unified customer journey are in the areas of Big Data & Predictive Analytics. Banks should be able to leverage a common source of data that transcends silos to be able to drive customer decisions that drive system behavior in real time using advanced analytics such as Machine Learning techniques, Cognitive computing platforms etc which can provide accurate and personalized insights to drive the customer journey forward. Such platforms need to be deployed in strategic areas such as the front office, call center, loan qualification etc. Further, business can create models of client personas and integrate these with the predictive analytic tier in such a way that an API (Application Programming Interface) approach is provided to integrate these with the overall information architecture.
3. Agile Business Practices–  Customer Journey Mapping calls for cross organizational design teams consisting of business experts, UX designers, Developers & IT leaders. The goal is to create intuitive & smart client facing applications using a rapid and agile business & development lifecycle. 
4. Risk & Compliance –  Scalable enterprise customer journey management also provides a way to integrate risk and compliance functions such as customer risk, AML compliance into the process. This can be achieved using a combination of machine learning & business rules.
5. Process Workflow – It all starts with the business thinking outside the box and bringing in learnings from other verticals like online retailing, telecom, FinTechs etc to create journeys that reimagine existing business processes using technology. An example would be to reimagine the mortgage application process by having the bank grant a mortgage using a purely online process by detecting that this may be the best product for a given consumer. Once the initial offer is validated using a combination of publicly available MLS (Multi Listing Scheme) data & the consumer’s financial picture, the bank can team up with realtors to provide the consumer with an online home shopping experience and help take the process to a close using eSigning.
6. Value Proposition – It is key for financial services organizations to identify appropriate usecases as well as target audiences as they begin creating critical customer journeys. First identifying & then profiling these key areas such as customer onboarding, mortgage/auto loan application, fraud claims management workflows in the retail bank, digital investment advisory in wealth management etc are key. Once identified, putting in place strong value drivers with demonstrable ROI metrics is critical in getting management buy in. According to BCG,banks that have adopted an incremental approach to customer journey innovation have increased their revenues by 25% and their productivity by 20% to 40% [1].

Conclusion..

As financial services firms begin to embark on digital transformation, they will need to transition to a customer oriented mindset. Along with a Single View of Client, Customer Journey Mapping is a big step to realizing digitization. Banks that can make this incremental transition will surely realize immense benefits in customer lifetime value & retention as compared to their peers.Furthermore, when a Bank embarks on Data Monetization – using the vast internal data (about customers, their transaction histories, financial preferences, operational insights etc) to create new products or services or to enhance the product experience – journey mapping is a foundational capability that they need to possess.

References..

[1] Boston Consulting Group 2016- “How digitized Customer Journeys can help Banks win hearts, minds and profits”