Smartphone penetration sits at upwards of 80 per cent, while more than half of Australians (53 per cent) own a tablet, laptop and smartphone.
The digital experience – how a brand digitally interacts with its customers during the discovery, transaction, delivery and support of a product or service is everywhere.
It has rapidly become one of the most important elements of the emerging financial services customer experience.
However, despite this significant shift in customer expectations for digital experience, recent research from SAP Australia titled The Australian Digital Experience Report shows that most companies are falling short in meeting customer expectations for digital.
This isn’t just bad for consumers; it’s bad for business. Digital experiences that fail to delight consumers can negatively influence customer advocacy, lead to a loss of loyalty and ultimately affect revenue.
This article will look specifically at the digital gap in the Australian banking and insurance sectors – what consumers expect compared to what is actually being delivered and provide some advice on how those brands can improve.
On average, banks scored positively on the three attributes of the digital experience most important to their customers, which were: to be available anytime, to offer a cohesive and integrated solution, and to fit in with the consumer’s life.
But, they underperformed in digital experiences tailored to the individual, so weren’t "respectful and dedicated to the customer’s needs, responsive and interactive and didn’t provide relevant offers that didn’t infringe on privacy".
In the digital world, the customer context is king
Today, it’s no longer about ‘best practice’, it’s about ‘appropriate practices’ based on a contextual experience.
The digitally-savvy customers are shifting their question from what is best to what is best for me.
With the growth in analytics and the wealth of data, banks and insurance providers know more about their customers than ever before.
We believe it’s how and when companies respond to this knowledge to meet customer expectations that will ultimately determine the winners from the losers.
The right conversation at the wrong time can be the wrong conversation.
Responding with insight is as important as responding
Banks and insurers hold some of the richest information about customer’s lifestyles and behaviours – more so than any other companies in any sector.
But the knowledge of the customer is only as good as their ability to understand, predict, and tailor their response in products and services more effectively.
This is a fundamental truth regarding customer engagements and the importance of consistency across all digital channels.
Regardless of the channel or device chosen, the customer must still receive consistency in the products and services which align with their expectations from the brand.
For this reason, how an organisation manages customer data is as important as the data itself.
In the past, companies tried to achieve nirvana by building enterprise data models to have a single physical store of all company data.
Unfortunately, the diverse ways different parts of the company define, manage and report on financial, customer and product data limits the way they can respond to customers in a consistent way.
To further complicate matters, companies are typically broken down by distinct lines of businesses which are great at driving economies of scale but terrible at supporting a consistent experience across all lines of business.
Digital must have a seat at the executive table
Most banks and insurers will try to drive a digital agenda by breaking down data, system and process silos to deliver a consistent enterprise digital customer experience.
However, the architecture of most legacy systems and tools that collect, store and display data are not geared for the digital world.
Most systems are designed to provide highly efficient processes to support lines of business. So how do banks and insurers drive a digital agenda across those different silos?
Some will struggle repeatedly to drive a unified digital vision across lines of business, leveraging disparate systems and agendas, hoping to align cross-company stakeholders only to result in a web online strategy delivering limited customer value.
More mature players establish an office around a chief digital officer or customer officer to sit across the existing organisation, managing a technology platform which delivers a consistent digital experience without radically destabilising or complicating existing line of business responsibilities.
Digital requires a different operating model
Knowing your customer also means building the right teams and honing the right skills internally to engage with the data and deliver business insights.
Data scientists, line of business analysts and IT architects who understand the business and who can design systems that integrate data sources from across functions are instrumental in developing an effective digital strategy for banking and insurance brands.
Important to the overall customer experience is the integration of all channels to the consumer, digitally online and physically in store, to deliver a consistent experience and meaningful customer engagement.
Ultimately, successful integration of these channels leads to omnichannel commerce – the seamless integration of systems that allows shoppers to browse, buy and take possession of goods more flexibly and conveniently, leading to more sales.
Today, digital has given the power back to the consumer. There has been a distinct shift in the way the banking and insurance sectors market and sell their products and this will continue, particularly as the millennial generation drive this change.
It’s all about what the consumer wants and the companies that make the right offer, to the right customer, through the right channel at the right time will succeed and increase their market share.
Michael Kong is the senior director for financial services at SAP Australia.
