Following our Customer Experience event in Phnom Penh with the presence of BFSI experts, we are eager to delve further into how technology can elevate customer experience, emphasising on its application within the banking sector.
In today's fast-paced and ever-evolving business environment, understanding the pivotal role of technology in shaping customer experiences has never been more crucial. We'll explore how technology empowers businesses in creating exceptional and memorable customer experiences, which, in turn, drive success and loyalty. Customer experience is the heart of the relationship between a business and its customers. Typically, when people talk about customer experience (CX) they mean traditional sales and marketing touch points along the customer journey—for example, attentive store clerks in attractive stores, or simple and beautiful apps and websites. Why does it matter? Why is CX so important? Because it's the key differentiator in today's competitive landscape. Customers don't just want products; they seek experiences.
Allow me to share an example from the banking and finance industry. Customer experience (CX) in banking refers to all the efforts you put into making every client feel important when they are interacting with your bank. It is also the cumulation of all the interactions that a customer perceives along the entire journey.
Banks that invest in customer experience trends have higher rates of recommendation, greater wallet share, and are more likely to up-sell or cross-sell products and services to existing customers. Digital Banking Report has found that “improving the customer experience in banking” should be the first goal for banking institutions and financial service providers. CX has reached a level of paramount importance in recent years, and customers expect banks to focus on creating an experience culture that nurtures their needs, builds trust, is personalised and exceeds their expectations. The key customer expectations when it comes to digitised banking experience are: Easy accessibility, Real Time Assistance, Personalised Services and Data Security.
Technology has transformed CX in ways we couldn't have imagined just a few decades ago. It has become the bridge between businesses and the ever-evolving expectations of our customers. With the help of technology, we can streamline, enhance and personalise customer interactions to deliver exceptional experiences. Technology plays a crucial role in CX as it serves as a channel through which exceptional CX can be delivered. However, everything starts with data. To understand the customer, organisations will need both general and individual data to identify situations, usage, requirements, patterns, etc. This would then be fed into a system or tool for analysis. While many AI tools are still in the experimental stage, we can see them evolving to a point where they can provide personalised data on each consumer.
If relevant data is scarce, finding suitable proxies or establishing methods to collect and utilise existing data will be crucial. Leveraging technology for data processing, insights generation and user interface design will help to improve the system continuously. This makes the consumer experience even better. To underscore the significance of technology in CX, consider these recent statistics - According to Accenture, 57% of business leaders feel that conversational chatbots deliver a large ROI on minimal investment, while research done by IBM showed that nowadays, 77 percent of businesses are using or exploring AI.
In conclusion, by incorporating innovative technology and reimagining existing systems, businesses can transform the customer journey and stand out in their industry. Just as Apple disrupted the smartphone market by not only designing a sleek device but also creating an entire ecosystem, building a good customer experience requires an all-encompassing approach that covers every aspect of the product or service.