By Fabrice Martin, Chief Product Officer, Clarabridge
When a bank or financial services company directly uses customer feedback to make decisions at the executive level, it’s almost as if that company has given its customers a seat in the boardroom; however, just because a business is open to using customer feedback in this way doesn’t mean it has successfully done so.
Companies may think they’re listening to “Voice of the Customer (VoC) data,” but they must make sure their information is truly representative of the customer voice. Failure to address this subtle yet critical nuance can result in an organisation making decisions based on a limited understanding of the customer perspective.
If a company uses misleading data to make important business decisions, it will not be able to understand what the customer really wants. This reality can have devastating effects on a business’s ability to maintain a compelling value proposition and can put it at a disadvantage if competitors succeed in more effectively using the data.
To mitigate the risk of failing to consider customer input, businesses must first understand why certain metrics may be misleading and then understand how to turn accurate insights into action.
Understand when the data doesn’t show the full picture
Many executives in the financial services sector believe that relying on metrics such as NPS or CSAT provides a comprehensive view of the customer experience. In fact, an article in the Wall Street Journal states that the term “net promoter” or “NPS” was cited more than 150 times in earnings conference calls by 50 S&P 500 companies in 2018. But, as the WSJ article points out, this statistic fails to tell the entire story.
By relying on a single metric to capture the complexity of the end-to-end customer experience, senior executives can miss important data that impacts the bottom line. Businesses often measure NPS through surveys, but the results only reflect the views of those actually completed the survey and may be more likely to reflect the perspectives of those who had an especially good or bad experience. Therefore, the findings may not represent the views of customers outside of those categories, causing the company to overlook a potentially huge portion of its customer base and sacrifice relevant insights that could increase profit.
While executives may be mentioning NPS frequently, a sole reliance on this metric offers a very shallow and incomplete picture of how customers actually feel.
Listen to multiple sources of data
In order to broaden the types of metrics used to examine the customer experience, companies must look beyond the survey. Customers are using a variety of channels such as email, chat, calls, surveys and social media to interact with banks and financial institutions regarding issues ranging from checking an account balance to arranging a mortgage. They’re also sharing their experiences and communicating with other customers on blogs, forums and review sites. Regardless of the channel, it’s imperative that customer-centric organisations analyse them all.
By including feedback from multiple channels, businesses can access the unsolicited feedback their customers are offering and review insights that reflect both structured and unstructured data.
Through the process of analysing multiple sources of data, companies can ensure that the voices of all their customers are heard.
Integrate findings and enrich your insights
Once a company establishes a process for ingesting feedback from a variety of channels, it must integrate the findings from those sources. By looking at a single, aggregate view of the data, the business can begin to identify the areas where customers are satisfied and those which they feel need improvement. Then it can begin determining recommendations and action items.
Using this approach, a large banking customer determined that customers were finding one of its investment options to be confusing, and employees were also unclear about the product offering. The company promptly updated the employee training process and rewrote the product brochures to eliminate confusion and drive product adoption.
This example illustrates the importance of considering metrics beyond NPS and CSAT when identifying opportunities to create a better customer experience. It’s necessary to enrich the data by measuring characteristics such as sentiment, effort and emotion to really understand the entirety of the customer experience.
Insight into customer engagement, emotion, effort and sentiment also serves as a strong predictor of loyalty, which is vital for any bank. For example, research from Gartner shows that solving problems quickly and easily is the most successful way to build customer loyalty. The research also shows that 94% of customers are likely to repurchase after a low effort experience. By enriching the data and examining more nuanced measures of CX, companies can begin looking at the leading indicators of loyalty and satisfaction instead of the lagging ones.
Demonstrate a willingness to act on insights
After identifying accurate insights, banks and financial services organisations must act upon that information. By listening to customers at all touchpoints and integrating the findings, they’ve already taken the first step toward giving the customer a seat in the boardroom; however, it’s imperative that they demonstrate their commitment through action.
By putting a spotlight on initiatives that highlight the insights-to-action process, companies will encourage customers to trust that they are truly listening. This technique will also add an element of authenticity to the brand by sending the message that the company cares. It’s important for the business to incorporate some degree of visibility into the process and communicate its efforts to customers in order to enjoy maximum business and brand benefits while creating a better CX.
It’s always more effective to show customers that a business cares than it is to simply tell them, and customers will show their appreciation with revenue and loyalty.
Conclusion
To truly give customers a seat in the boardroom, banks should look beyond basic metrics, consider data from every channel, integrate findings and act upon the information. If an organisation follows these steps, it will make significant progress toward improving the customer experience.
