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It’s no surprise that Banking is undergoing one of the most crucial periods of transformation of the modern era. Like many other large, complex and regulated industries, the very foundation of banking is being challenged. Not long ago it would be unheard of to hear the saying “Banking is necessary, Banks are not” and yet here we are, in 2015 with hundreds of Fintech startups gunning for mindshare and wallet share and disrupting an industry which is at the very root of our modern economy.
The changes we have seen in the past 5-10 years have brought an onslaught of complexity, cost, frustration and more so, a lack of trust between consumers and their primary banking providers. Today, customers are demanding entirely 1:1, smart, and simple provider relationships, but banks offer little in this space beyond the commoditized digital movement of money.
Dare we say, is it possible to transform, simplify and truly know your customers and be their trusted financial partners - where customers can actually say “I love my bank’. At Salesforce, we believe it is possible because we help banks of all sizes and jurisdictions, reinvent they way they treat their customers and their employees. Let's explore the five steps to achieve this level of trust and intimacy.
How many banks have tried and failed to move to a customer centric model? The list is large. Who owns the customer? Who is the chief customer experience officer? Hard questions to answer, but an answers fundamentally required in today’s market. When Banks stop thinking in terms of products, processes and channels and start thinking about the customer in totality then they have reached a major pivot point. Product teams that look across product boundaries, coupled with marketing programs organizational alignment and process steps that focus on the overall customer experience are all key ingredients in pivoting the bank to unite along customer first dimensions. When a “customer obsession” mindset and business line transparency are in synch, then legacy systems, disconnected tools and cumbersome operating models can be challenged in a whole new light. Salesforce is a ‘system of engagement’ platform designed to dis-intermediate silo’d core systems and data and fuse that information together in a way that is entirely focused on the customer. It becomes the tool that ignites this renewed mindset and delivers value to every stakeholder across product, policy, process and delivery and yes - even risk!.
For over 15 years the industry has been struggling to achieve the mythical ‘360’ customer view. Frustration over defining this view, reaching agreement on its components to say nothing of coalescing the data necessary for it to actually be delivered has eluded most banks. The reality is, combining the most basic of account, CIF and analytics, together with interaction, activities, opportunities and service cases is enough to significantly move the needle. Salesforce provides the mechanism to surface and organize this data in a way that is simple, intuitive, real-time and meaningful. Instead of a 360’ customer view, an ‘actionable’ customer view which is constantly organic, and always meaningful will deliver incredible results focused on:
Consistent and linear customer conversations driving increased NPS
Simplified, transparent and collaborative selling with enterprise leads and referrals management that drives increased revenue and products per customer
Complete transparency and awareness of service issues driving SLA goals and consistent customer communications also driving up NPS.
Connecting data and surfacing it together around a customer entity provides the foundation for doing almost anything from a solution perspective - selling, onboarding, servicing, cross selling, collaborating and creating engaging digital apps. However, these processes cannot be thought of in isolation or independent components of the customer banking lifecycle. Everything must be connected. One process bleeds into the next, which feeds data into the customer view and is used to surface ongoing knowledge and strategies that derive amazing customer experiences. When banks stop thinking in terms of functional and process silo’s, but realize they are all part of a continuum and must all be layered on top of the customer profile - then the connections really start to add value. These services and capabilities can then be propagated across channels giving management and customers a full view into any action. When this concept is delivered via a platform that can orchestrate services together the net result is a connected end to end consistent experience. For example, a mortgage process encompasses dozens of different steps and functions and in most banks is brought to life through different, often disconnected apps, data and people. When this entire process is connected - from lead to closing - everyone benefits. Costs are reduced, efficiencies are gained, customers and third parties are more informed and management has insight and control. Extrapolate this example to hundreds of disconnected banking processes and you begin to realize that when you connect them together, oriented around customer well being - you begin to change the model radically.
The term platform has been thrown about loosely a lot these days in technology. It seems everyone has a platform capable of doing a myriad of incredible things. One needs to understand however what an enterprise technology platform is and specifically the value it can bring when you standardize your customer engagement on a singular platform. It means efficiency, speed, lower cost, agile innovation and ability to derive solutions on that platform that are all interoperable and interconnected. Business needs evolve, regulations force change and channels keep expanding. Creating apps that meet these needs is vital, but doing so in isolation, as opposed to creating them from a source ‘platform’ means that you are recreating the past maze of disconnected apps, data and tools. A business platform that provides the foundation for the majority of your customer engagement apps, across the banking lifecycle and different businesses, means you are enforcing a model of connectedness, data sharing and consistent delivery. Salesforce is a customer engagement platform supporting the array of customer lifecycle services that are totally extensible, natively digital, socially connected and immediately available in the cloud. It’s not about apps or data in isolation, it’s about a singular platform that your apps and data live on that drives true agility, innovation and business results.
No one has the appetite for large scale projects, major capital expenditures and months or years to see even the most basic results to say nothing of innovative apps and solutions.. If the concepts outlined here cannot be proven in 90 day sprints, then the underlying assumptions are not valid. At Salesforce, our value resides in speed, agility and an open ecosystem. Most of our banking customers implement the foundations of their solutions within 4-6 months and see impacts on day one when their solutions are implemented. This gives you the ability to build components quickly, make changes as you go, and tackle problems in whole or bite sized modules that eventually transform into new ways of fixing outdated business models. This approach has been proven time and again by our customers and is the lowest risk way of moving forward and thriving in today's disruptive banking climate.
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