Today, with the so-called On-Demand Economy and new consumer habits, the financial sector is undergoing a transformation in how it operates and connects with its customers.
Financial companies are adopting customer-centric service strategies, where customer experience (CX) plays a key role.
Enhancing CX can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. Providing high-quality customer service is essential for delivering outstanding experiences. Additionally, training teams in best customer service practices and implementing processes and systems that ensure customer satisfaction are crucial.
Companies are leveraging advanced technologies and customer-focused strategies to offer faster, more personalized, and more convenient services.
In the financial sector, customer service has seen several emerging trends in recent times. Here are some of the latest trends:
1. Personalization
To remain competitive, personalizing the customer experience has become increasingly important. Companies are using technology to offer tailored experiences. If businesses want to boost customer retention rates, increase conversions, and turn customers into brand ambassadors, they must personalize their service experience.
This involves collecting data throughout the customer journey and analyzing it to better understand customer needs and preferences, enabling a higher level of personalization at every touchpoint. Personalizing CX allows businesses to meet individual needs and serves as a key differentiator from competitors.
Financial companies are leveraging data analytics and big data to gain deeper insights into customer needs and behaviors. By analyzing large volumes of data, companies can identify patterns, predict behaviors, and provide personalized recommendations. This improves customer service quality and helps businesses make better decisions based on customer needs.
Additionally, adopting an omnichannel strategy is essential. Companies are integrating various communication channels, such as online chat, social media, and mobile apps, to provide a seamless and consistent experience across all touchpoints.
2. Omnichannel Experience
To offer customers a seamless personalized experience, an omnichannel strategy is necessary. While it may sound repetitive, implementing a combined omnichannel strategy ensures that businesses meet their customers where they are, with all relevant information. This requires a clear understanding of each customer’s preferences and journey. An omnichannel approach also allows customer service agents to have a complete view of a customer’s interaction history, enabling more efficient and personalized support.
With the rise of digital banking, the need for financial institutions to provide an omnichannel experience is also growing. This means customers should be able to move effortlessly between channels (e.g., online, mobile, in-person) without having to restart their experience each time. Omnichannel experiences are vital because customers have come to expect them. First, customers want businesses to anticipate their needs. Second, they expect consistency—messaging should be uniform across all channels.
Customers expect service agents to recognize them, understand their inquiries, and resolve them quickly, regardless of the channel used. Financial institutions must ensure that all their customer service teams have access to the correct data at all times.
To deliver the perfect omnichannel experience, businesses must optimize both their digital and traditional CX—meaning both chatbots and human customer service teams.
3. Humanizing the Digital Experience
Financial companies are increasingly using AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to automate customer interactions and provide quick responses to common inquiries. However, this often results in the loss of a human touch, making relationships feel colder and more impersonal. In 2023, institutions focused on humanizing their digital experience to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
To humanize the digital customer experience, companies must thoroughly understand the customer journey and its various touchpoints, which may include chatbots, social media, phone calls, or video calls. A well-humanized digital CX should deliver a consistent experience across all these channels. Additionally, understanding what customers expect at different points in their journey helps tailor interactions more effectively.
Technology today allows businesses to humanize digital experiences through tools such as video calls or augmented reality (AR), simulating a physical branch or office while providing virtual assistance.
4. Growth of Self-Service Options
More than ever, financial customers prefer to resolve issues on their own and access real-time information. Financial institutions are providing online tools and resources that enable customers to access their data, complete transactions, and solve problems without direct interaction with a customer service agent. Additionally, businesses are implementing live chat solutions and real-time notifications to offer instant support when needed.
A Microsoft study indicates that over 90% of customers expect companies to provide self-service options, including knowledge bases, product FAQs, tutorials, AI-powered chat and messaging, and automated contact centers.
Offering self-service options allows financial institutions to enhance the customer experience. Self-service is fast, available 24/7, and delivers a consistent experience across all interactions.