The financial services industry has never had a better opportunity to embrace a customer-centric approach to doing business. Raising the bar for customer experience can create clear competitive advantages, and a responsive digital channel offering is essential. Here, insiders from the banking industry, the insurance sector and HCL Technologies’ customer experience management principal discuss the challenges of remaining agile in the digital space. http://www.hcltech.com/financial-services/cxstudio

1. Industry experts discuss new
concepts for managing
the customer experience
in the digital world.
Customer
care
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2. Company insight > Customer experience management
Future Banking | www.banking-gateway.com32
T
here is a widely held belief
that the financial services
sector has been slow to
respond to the changing demands
of its customers, despite growing
recognition that a customer-centric
model will define the industry’s
future. As the industry continues to
evolve in the digital age, it becomes
imperative that financial services
institutions of all kinds focus on
delivering a consistent and high-
quality customer experience.
Anne Boden, former chief operating
officer at AIB, firmly believes that the
banking sector cannot simply keep its
head down and carry on as if nothing
has changed.
“I think there is a certain amount of
complacency that the existing model
will stay as it is forever. Looking back
over my career, which is over 30 years
now, nothing much has changed.
There is more that has been exactly
the same than has really disrupted the
industry. I think we are in a situation
now – post–2008 financial crisis and
with much more regulation in the
financial services sector – where
consumers want to see something
different and are demanding better
service. Something has to change,”
she remarks.
Interaction with customers through
digital channels is increasingly
important as mobile and online
services become ever more popular.
It is an arena where organisations
can develop an agile and responsive
service offering that keeps pace with
what customers expect from providers
of financial services.
Harvind Bhatti, principal – customer
experience management at HCL
Technologies, believes that a well-
crafted and well-managed customer
experience is a key differentiator for
financial institutions, as well as a
driver for overall performance.
“Institutions are increasingly
realising that there is a strong
link between a mature customer
experience and better business
outcomes,” she says. “For example,
globally, nearly 50% of customers
close at least one banking product
a year. For customers opening and
closing accounts, the most important
reason that influenced their decision
was customer experience [more so
than rates, fees and location].
“There are numerous studies that
suggest that there is astrong correlation
between advocacy [those customers
who would recommend their primary
institution to someone else] and trust.
While overall financial stability is
usually the top reason for complete
trust, how customers are treated is
the second reason, followed by other
elements of experience such as
complaints handling, communications
and quality of advice. Therefore,
treatment drives trust, which drives
advocacy and, hence, there is a
correlation with growth.
“The opportunity to provide better
treatment and advocacy though
customer experience has never been so
big for the industry,” continues Bhatti.
“Relationships and service can be
built and delivered ubiquitously and
directly. Let’s take technology services
like Mobile Reach or the growing
emergence of sensor-laden devices –
both provide ways to improve the
quality of engagement and service
delivered, and in some cases,
additionally support more cost-
efficient methods of interaction.”
The success of these and other
tools is using them purposely in a
well-crafted experience that supports
genuine assistance in moments of
The financial services industry has never had a better opportunity to embrace a customer-
centric approach to doing business. Raising the bar for customer experience can create clear
competitive advantages, and a responsive digital channel offering is essential. Here, insiders
from the banking industry, the insurance sector and HCL Technologies’ customer experience
management principal discuss the challenges of remaining agile in the digital space.
A dynamic
response to
digital challenges
Interaction with customers through digital
channels is increasingly important as mobile and
online services become ever more popular.
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3. Company insight > Customer experience management
Future Banking | www.banking-gateway.com 33
need, or provides genuine additional
value to a customer.
HCL is a global IT services
company that specialises in software
consulting services, enterprise
transformation, remote infrastructure
management, R&D and business
process outsourcing. Financial
services is one of its key verticals,
and it is helping many organisations
in the sector to rethink their approach
to customer experience.
Financial institutions are
appreciating more and more that
customer experience is increasingly
linked to their overall digital agenda,
and that digital requires a permanent
and fundamental change in the way
business is done. It requires a total
rethink of operational processes,
professional skills and organisational
culture to support the change.
“Customer experience requires
becoming more engaged, intelligent
and connected with a faster internal
clock speed,” Bhatti explains.
“The challenge for brands is
the organisational calibration of
technology, culture, and ways of
working and investment required.
For brands that were not born
digital, navigating the most effective
route to this capability is one of the
biggest agenda items at the moment.
Challenger brands, like the recently
announced Atom Bank, are building
entire propositions on customer
experience and value. These brands
are born digital, and have the inherent
capability and mindset to mine the
opportunity. Traditional brands have
to transform and be ‘reborn digital’.
“Everyone talks about customer
needs, but their fundamental needs
haven’t changed – their expectations
have. Our potential to better serve
those needs is far greater, and
customers know that from experiences
within and outside our industry. The
expectation to be consistently and
seamlessly served across all channels
and all product areas, for example, is a
hygiene factor. For institutions, this is one
of the hardest journeys they have faced.
The journey to differentiation really
only begins once you can top that.”
Having understood that the
responsiveness and versatility of
digital channels are key to the
overall quality of customer experience
provided by financial services
institutions, HCL has developed
cXstudio – customer experience
studios – that help organisations
deliver front-end customer experience.
HCL believes that digital channels
need to be developed and optimised
with the end user and overall channel
ecosystem in mind. This is placing
greater emphasis on organisations to
have robust “learn, understand and
act” processes with experience design
capability that continuously defines
user and business needs in the
context of technical feasibility and
agile processes that deliver digital
channel solutions at the speed the
market requires.
“These requirements are
continuously increasing the cost
of digital-channel delivery for
organisations, and have proved
difficult to implement due to the
cultural change and organisational
alignment required,” adds Bhatti.
“cXstudio is our customer
experience studio, which we
house on site or near our client
organisations. The studios house
multiskilled and multifunctional
teams of business and IT experts
who will co-create and co-develop
channel projects using agile
and customer-centric delivery
approaches in collaboration with
client stakeholders.”
HCL has three studios currently
in operation, with another additional
studio planned in Europe. These
studios bring together research,
design, development, and analytics
and maintenance capability to quickly
deliver innovative digital solutions for
change and run projects.
The ability these studios provide
to continuously enhance concept
development, customer experience
and interaction, as well as optimise
deployment times for digital solutions,
helps clients to improve top-line
growth, improve customer satisfaction
and lower operational costs for
digital channels. The core concept
behind cXstudios is to fuse strong IT
capability with marketing; support
greater and faster alignment; and
move faster and more robustly from
business/consumer needs to delivering
business/consumer value.
“Customer experience capabilities
require a ‘high-touch and high-tech’
approach to front-end channel
development and optimisation, and
a speed of development that requires a
more agile approach,” explains Bhatti.
“Our cXstudios focus on delivering
front-end digital-channel experience
in a collaborative and agile delivery
model. The studios are either
co-located on clients’ sites, or within
walking distance of the client to
support the iterative development
of digital channel changes or
optimisation. We begin with
multiskilled teams at the start of the
concept process, so there is an equal
HCL is a global IT services company
that specialises in software consulting
services, enterprise transformation,
remote infrastructure management, R&D
and business process outsourcing.
Harvind Bhatti
Harvind Bhatti is a principal and senior director at HCL Technologies. She has
over 15 years’ experience in digital transformation from an IT and marketing
perspective. Harvind has lived and worked in Germany. Previous to HCL, she
was strategy director at SapientNitro and, earlier, VP marketing at Digitas.
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4. Company insight > Customer experience management
Future Banking | www.banking-gateway.com34
tension between marketing, business,
creative, analytical, and technology
skills in defining and eventually
implementing the solution.”
With accelerators such as cXstudios,
the industry can start to take
advantage of the opportunity that
now presents itself to make a dramatic
change in how it approaches customer
experience. Boden believes that the
industry has no time to lose if it is to
take advantage of such a capability.
“We are at the start of things
changing in the industry. The
important thing is to start addressing
what the customer wants rather than
what we as institutions want to
deliver. We have to stop looking at this
from the point of view of an institution
or of the financial services industry,
let’s think about what the customers
actually want. They don’t want us to
keep on doing things the same way
we always have, they want something
different,” she says.
Crossing the channels
The urgent need for financial services
institutions to focus on digital
channels as a powerful force in
shaping customer experience has
arisen because it is in this space that
customers have attained greater
control over their relationship
with banks, insurers and pensions
providers. They expect to be able to
interact with these organisations from
anywhere and at any time, just as they
do with online retailers or with their
network of contacts through social
media. David Beattie, customer service
director at life insurance, pensions and
asset management company Aegon,
sees this as a key driver of innovation
in the pensions sector.
“Customers want us to be here
outside of normal office hours, and
that is perfectly valid. That is a big
driver of Aegon’s Retiready offering,
which is a digital service for non-
advised savers that enables them
to assess their income needs and
choose the right products, and Aegon
Retirement Choices, which is a new
online pension and saving platform
that puts customers in control.
Information is available 24/7 online,
but we are also providing webchat
support in the evenings and at
weekends, as well as call-centre
support. There are also dynamic
FAQs that evolve in response to
customers’ needs,” says Beattie.
“The biggest problem customers
raise with us is that the changes in
the pensions industry are not easy to
understand. They want us to simplify
it for them so they can secure their
financial future. That is why the
Retiready online service is designed
The core concept behind cXstudios is to fuse
strong IT capability with marketing; support
greater and faster alignment; and move faster
and more robustly from business/consumer
needs to delivering business/consumer value.
cXstudio up close
■ On going customer experience
concepting, deployment and
optimisation across channels.
■ Using agile and customer-centric
delivery approaches.
■ Studios are co-located near the
customer, to ensure collaboration.
Typical benefits realisation
time: 18 months
Source: HCL
AnalyticsAnalys
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Product
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SCRUM TEAMS
Captain
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5. Company insight > Customer experience management
Future Banking | www.banking-gateway.com 35
entirely around customer feedback.
It was built hand in hand with
customers, and that in itself is a very
good example of customer service. In
the future, customers will want end-to-
end digital services as long as they
are simple to use. Our products should
be as easy to use as Amazon, Google,
Facebook or Twitter,” he adds.
In the banking industry, the
ability to interact with customers
across many channels is at once an
opportunity to form consistent and
agile client relationships, and to
glean the data on customers that is
essential to providing that level of
service. For Boden, the question
is how to best use that data in a
customer-centric model.
“When you look at the challenger
banks coming from the retail space,
for instance, you have to ask whether
their brand can stretch far enough and
whether customers will trust their
data with those organisations. Banking
is about far more than doing lots of
analytics on your bank account and
figuring out what to sell you next. I
think using that data to sell you more,
which is the retailer’s model, could be
very dangerous in the banking world.
We have to take this balance very
seriously. We have to use the client’s
data for the benefit of the client and
not just take every opportunity to sell
something off that data. Doing so
could lead to the next big mis-selling
scandal,” she says.
“All people in the C-suite in big banks
are constantly bombarded by people
trying to sell us propositions to sell
more. Consultants come in the door to
ask how they can help us increase the
number of products per customer. But
isn’t it flawed thinking to focus simply
on trying to sell more? Shouldn’t we
be thinking about what we can do with
the information and the technology we
have in order to help our customers?
That will help us to regain customers’
trust. We all messed up in 2008, we
lost the trust of our customers in many
arenas, and we have a long way to go
to regain that trust; we have to do that
by acting responsibly,” adds Boden.
Beattie agrees that using data is
not just about selling more products,
but rather about doing better by
customers. He sees better information
about customers as a starting point,
not the sole determining factor in
customer experience.
“Data analytics is important in this
industry, and we have made steps in
the last two years to better understand
our customers, but the answers they
need cannot just come from data.
Human factors and emotional
responses determine important
financial decisions,” he remarks.
HCL’s cXstudio incorporates not only
the analytics capability that can help
financial institutions to create additional
value from their customer data, but also
the skills to put that data to use in the
creation of better customer experience
in the digital space and the contact
centre. Bhatti believes that data
should shape the human and digital
interactions with customers.
“Data needs to play an even bigger role
in call centres, for example. Not just to sell
more products, but ultimately to create
the ‘wow’ moment for consumers. Some
consumers prefer to engage purely
digitally, while others are redirected more
increasingly to online self-service by
brands that want to reduce costs. The
call-centre experience therefore is
increasingly becoming the litmus test
of the quality of an institution’s human
interaction,” she says.
“Data can play a role in simply
ensuring that operatives are better
informed about the customer. In most
cases, the wider channel ecosystem
is designed so that the call centre is
the last channel used, and customers
are calling with an issue. The need
for a well-designed and seamless
omnichannel infrastructure is key
here – allowing operatives to be
more proactive about the problem.
“For instance, for one of our
leading global financial institutions,
customer experience starts first
with customer insight, having a deep
understanding of who they are and
what they’re trying to accomplish.
They are focused on designing an
experience tailored for customers in
their particular situation. They focus
on big life events that their customers
go through and make sure they build
touch points across channels. For
example, for customers who are
coming out of active employment,
they want to provide advice and
solutions to meet the important
needs that arise as they retire from
work. They use all of the data and
analytics they have to not only
respond well when customers contact
them in any channel, but also to get
much more proactive in anticipating
their needs and reaching out to them,”
she adds.
A matter of trust
Customers have more power than
ever to influence the market, not only
because it is simpler than ever to
switch to a new service provider, but
also because it is much easier to
publicly express views that can
impact an organisation’s brand. In
an industry that is still rebuilding its
reputation after the financial crisis
of 2008, brand integrity counts for a
lot. Customers expect the same level
of service from banks and pension
providers as they do from big retailers,
In an industry that is still rebuilding
its reputation after the financial crisis of
2008, brand integrity counts for a lot.
Anne Boden
Anne Boden is the former chief operating officer of Allied Irish Banks
(AIB) and an expert on the current banking sector. Born in Wales,
Boden previously held senior roles with Royal Bank of Scotland, ABN
Amro and insurer Aon.
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