CX Education 05: Learn how personalized messaging helps expand your customer base with Christopher Young from Adobe
Digital transformation is here for the long haul, and businesses that want to stay afloat must go through it. But in conservative industries like finance, change comes with many challenges, especially if the executive team is not open to innovation and is worried about the effect it might have.
So it’s critical to keep the conversation about entering and conquering the digital space alive. The more information financial institutions have, the more confident they’ll feel about taking that step. After all, people spend more time online and want to access various products and services there.
In this episode of CX Education, Christopher Young, the Director of Industry Strategy & Marketing for Financial Services at Adobe, joins our host Heather Share to discuss customer experience in the digital space, primarily in finance.
Chris discusses the challenges financial institutions face when establishing the tools, processes, and channels for client-company communication. He also talks about the importance of being where your customers are and communicating with younger generations, as that’s the path to growing your customer base in the future.
Find out more about how you can shift personalization into overdrive with the latest Adobe e-book.
Guest speaker
Christopher Young
Host
20 years of creating best-fit solutions in the SaaS platform world firmly places Heather as a leader in the space who is ideally positioned to help businesses achieve growth plans for retention, loyalty, and new business.
As a Product Adoption Manager at Sinch, Heather guides clients through emerging channels growing in popularity worldwide and promotes the importance of a conversational strategy.
Heather Share
Key insights
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Create an environment where customers feel comfortable communicating their finance-related plans, doubts, and concerns
The increased use of technology and the internet has influenced customers' preferences and reshaped their needs. Financial institutions that want to stay relevant in the market and continue to grow must stay atop innovations and make the most of the digital channels available. That way, they become part of the entire customer journey: prior to, during, and after a purchase. After all, when clients feel their needs are heard, they are more likely to stay with a particular organization. ''The key thing for financial services is loyalty. And loyalty has been put at risk with a lot of everything — the pandemic, digital entrance, all of these things. So that puts a lot of pressure on our financial services customers. There was a huge change in journeys.''
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The quality of customer experience depends on how fast you can adapt to change
Asked how he would rank financial institutions in terms of their digital experience - Christopher shares results from an Adobe Digital Trends Report. They had around 500 respondents from the financial services industry. One of the questions was, "How would you rate your digital experience in keeping up with customer expectations?" Around 70% of those surveyed claimed they are keeping pace or staying ahead, while 30% are lagging. However, they also got some additional insights. ''The same survey indicated that the marketing executives, 90 plus percent, said that the key to future success is the agility of the marketing department. And to be clear, it's not about applying an agile methodology, but it's for their teams to be able to move fast to rapidly respond to a customer's changing needs. So if there is a situation, consumers are going to react very differently, and it's how quickly you're able to respond to deliver on those experiences.''
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Two-way conversations will remain critical in the finance space
Again, technology grows, and companies experiment with various tools and methods to streamline procedures. AI is here to stay, and more and more companies use robo-advisors. But, as our guest says, people will still want to talk to a real person on specific occasions. ''At some point, someone thought that this would replace the human advisor altogether or we'll never need a call center again. But the reality is that it's going to be a mix, and it's gonna be a mix based on the preference of the individual and the particular situation they're in. You might need some much higher level of financial advice that a robo-advisor isn't designed to provide. That's where you would want the expertise of a human that could complement your whole range of experiences.''