The author hones right onto the expectations of personalized engagement consumers have developed when interacting with service providers in the last several years, and how financial institutions have been slow to adopt. Some of this reluctance is well-founded, with the need to preserve privacy and security of consumer data an imperative. However, this is a problem that can be solved, and consumers expect it to be, and will be drawn to those that do solve it. There also remains organizational obstacles to consumers having the experience they are coming to expect from FIs requiring a fundamental reformation of how FIs manage data. The author breaks it down thusly:
So, what’s getting in the way? Two things: disconnected data and the lack of automated decision-making from a central source. True personalization considers real-time behavioral data from web browsing sessions, purchases or other expressions of intent both from in-person engagements and interactions via kiosks, email, mobile applications and websites. But it goes well beyond that because to understand each customer’s journey, financial institutions also need to integrate legacy and transactional data locked in silos, such as past orders, as well as “event” data, such as missed payments. By uniting data (behavioral, transactional and historical) into a single view of the customer, the bank can maximize cross-selling by managing the communication stream across multiple channels and become truly customer centric.
Mercator Advisory Group recognizes comprehensive views of the individual consumer will need to be compiled and analyzed to deliver relevant service offers that are timely. Data partitioning and anonymity in processing will also need to be preserved. We anticipate the leverage of platform oriented will help to surmount these issues and deliver the wider range of consumer directed customizable solutions. Our recent report Banking as a Platform: API Technology Presents Opportunity to Financial Institutions takes a closer look at the approach.
Overview bu Joseph Walent, Associate Director, Customer Interactions Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
Read the full story here
