By Gabriel Schild, Executive Director Digital Business Transformation at Verizon
The first instalment of this blog looked at how adaptive networks can transform customer experience in financial services. Now I’ll look at the impact this is having on data strategies and cybersecurity risks for financial institutions.
Before digital transformation became an industry theme, financial services organizations spent most of their efforts in collecting customer trend data via surveys and focus groups. The collected data was not only used to substantiate investments in marketing programs, but also in the investment in technologies that encompassed new ways of embracing their customers.
Today however, with the advances in mobile first designs, open API adoption, and Artificial Intelligence, the access to exponential customer data is driving new customer experience designs that rely heavily on an adaptive network.
Some of the examples that we see today can be found in the greater functionality of mobile banking applications. The ability to withdraw money from an ATM using a mobile device, the capability of chatting with a bank agent live via a banking application and getting advice/support via Artificial Intelligence are key drivers that require an adaptive network design.
Mitigating risk in the customer experience transformation
While agility and adaptability to business processes are critical, managing security risks in the financial services sector has never been more important.
The increase in digital footprints driven by the explosion in the market of greater function and capabilities of the Internet of Things (IoT) has created a near borderless attack surface for cyber breaches. As massive amounts of data are being collected from devices, processed, and presented for a better customer experience, the potential risk for gaps in the security protocols become more prevalent.
As part of an overarching customer experience strategy, financial services organizations need to take a step back, look more broadly at their security processes and assess whether the current approach to their security playbook is comprehensive enough.
Is it secure enough for the changes that are being made? What does it mean for the internal stakeholders involved in the development of a customer experience transformation? Does the organisation’s current security program support its vision?
These questions substantiate the need for the security organization within the bank to take a proactive role as part of the greater CX team assisting in future designs that satisfy both the security needs of the customer as well as their desire for a more robust customer experience.