I recently attended two really amazing events: the MoneyLive Summit in London and the OpenText™ Middle East Summit in Dubai. I can’t tell you how great it was to meet with people in person again. But what was even more interesting about my trip was that, whether in the Middle East or Europe, everyone agreed on two things: The pandemic has changed the world, and the Financial Services industry must take digital experience to the next level to meet customer expectations.
When Covid-19 hit and we all had to retreat to our homes, most of us adapted quickly to our new work environments. We became Zoom and Microsoft® Teams experts but, of course, personal contact was significantly diminished. Now, emerging from the pandemic, it’s so valuable to hear directly from customers again.
While in Dubai, I was particularly struck by something that used to be phrased as a question before the Coronavirus but has now become a statement: ‘Why can’t I have the same great customer experience I get from consumer brands from my Financial Services provider?’ is now ‘I need that same experience.’
I think that statement reveals a huge fault line that separates what I call the ‘digital fakers’ from the ‘digital doers.’ We’ve all heard that the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation – changes that before would have taken many years were accomplished in months or even weeks. And certainly transformation was a recurring topic in both events I attended. But I sensed there was a significant difference between those Financial Services companies that quickly created a digital veneer to their business processes and those that took the opportunity to change the way they operate and improve the experience they deliver to customers.
A frictionless customer experience
The pandemic has demonstrated – cruelly at times – that ‘good enough’ just won’t cut it. Being able to deliver a digital service is a very different thing from the simple, frictionless experience that your customers want and need. If your organization is administering emergency loans, for example, customers have no tolerance for forms that don’t work, experiences that break down when changing channels and applications that take weeks to process and are not fit for purpose — even if there is an outcome in the end.
Things have to change. We’ve been calling it ‘humanizing digital and digitalizing the human,’ but it really comes down to the same thing. The people I’ve been speaking with, both customers and industry experts, say that Financial Services organizations must deliver the right, highly personalized services and products at the right time to their customers and clients in order to compete.
You have to really understand your customer and be able to provide what they want through simple, one-click services. Financial organizations need to automate and digitize whatever can be automated and digitized in order to accelerate their transition to what Deloitte describes as being ‘cloud fluent.’
Delivering customer-oriented digital transformation
I think an excellent example of a ‘digital doer’ is Close Brothers Asset Finance and Leasing. As part of its transformation initiative, the company is partnering with us to create a customer experience solution based on OpenText™ Cloud and OpenText™ Extended ECM that enables the entire organization to share, collaborate and analyze information for more informed decision-making while mitigating risk through improved governance and security. The company is using the information and insights gained to meet customers’ evolving expectations.
Meeting customer expectations in a post-pandemic world means creating effective digital services based on fully deriving the value of customer information. Customer Information Management for Banking from OpenText™ helps customers, employees and partners engage and collaborate through any delivery channel. It consolidates and centralizes documents to offer a single customer view and source of truth that eases auditing and compliance reporting.
