Designing Processes to Address Changing Customer Behaviors
Customer preferences and behaviors are changing at an increasing rate,
and it will impact banks’ service delivery significantly over the
next two years. New research from Nielson (third quarter of 2010)
finds that 53.4 million U.S. consumers own smartphones—up from 26
million in 2009 and 15 million in 2008. The projection is that half
of American adults will own one by the same period in 2011.
According to a September 2010 Google Finance Customer Experience
Benchmarking study, when it comes to financial products, 88% of
customers today start their journey online. It is noteworthy that
68% of those surveyed prefer to apply online, compared to 29% who
prefer the traditional branch experience. However, 89% of people
said that they are open to applying online in the future if banks
can get their approval processes up to scratch.
It is clear that delivery channel preferences are shifting along with
customer capabilities, and we need to be designing the right
customer experience in the delivery of those services along with
technical capabilities. This design requirement presents an
opportunity to reduce the cost of delivery while improving the
customer experience.
Banks are responding in a variety of ways, using their own systems and
partnering with some aggregators. Citibank has partnered with Bundle
and Microsoft to provide a personal finance site that will attract
and hold their customer base. The 2011 bank startup, BankSimple, is
partnering with Mint. Variations of Yodlee’s program all operate
essentially the same, whether it is with Fidelity’s FullView, Bank
of America’s My Portfolio, Wachovia’s OneStop, or HSBC’s EasyView.
The aggregators are starting to provide customers with content that
they are looking for in an easy-to-use format. Other aggregators
include Blippy, Swipely, and Money Dashboard.
The evidence is clear with regard to customer behaviors and mobile
opportunities. The question is, how will community banks respond?
Will they design service offerings and applications on the mobile
web, or will they safely develop device-specific sites?
There are many strategic questions to be answered. The pace of
behavioral change should not be ignored. It is time to design this
alternative delivery channel and engage the customer in the process.
Currently, only 40% of the top 100 banks offer services over the
mobile web. It is a good bet that a year from now this percentage
will be significantly higher. But what will be the startup cost and,
more importantly, what will be the ongoing delivery costs? You can
design it or adopt what the systems designers designate.
