1. The Future of Customer Experience in
the Era of Digital

2. The Future of Customer Experience in the Era of Digital
Earlier this year, 18 CMOs, CDOs, and digital marketing leaders from a cross-section of
Sydney’s major financial services organisations met to take part in the latest installment
of OmniChannel Media’s Executive Dialogue Luncheon.
Titled ‘The Future of Customer Experience in the Era of Digital’, the event was hosted by
OmniChannel Media in partnership with GMC Software.
The luncheon presented an opportunity for thought leaders to share insights on the
challenges that the financial services sector faces with digital engagement, adoption,
and omni-channel mobility. Moving forward, the goal to enhance the customer
experience (CX) across digital channels will become central to innovation in the sector as
organisations are forced to respond to increasing competition in the
banking space.
The keynote presentation was delivered by Claire Rogers,
Head of Digital Banking at ANZ. Rogers opened the
discussion through sharing some insights into how
ANZ is creating opportunities by eliminating friction
for the customer and putting digital at
the centre of every business strategy.
General Manager of GMC Software Nick
Dempsey moderated the discussion, with
input also provided from GMC’s Product
Marketing Director Antoine Hemon-Laurens.
Back Row (Left to Right): Aaron Everingham, GMC Software; Mike Dovey, IAG; Jonah Paul Cretser- Hartenstein, ING Direct;
Antoine Hemon-Laurens, GMC Software; Niall Burke, TAL Life; Scott Anderson, GMC Software; Winston Su, QBE Insurance;
Chris Taylor, Navy Health; Bryan Meredith, Rabobank.
Front Row (Left to Right): Kristie Walia, Macquarie; Julie Simon, GMC Software; Linda Broady, Allianz Australia; Nick
Dempsey, GMC Software; Claire Rogers, ANZ; Angela Greenwood, Mortgage Choice; Chris Kirby, TAL Life; Emily Bates,
Colonial First State; Stuart Walker, Commonwealth Bank.

3. Strategies in Creating a Better Customer Experience
Rogers commenced by looking at how ANZ and the industry have built a customer
experience strategy over the last decade.
“The history of digital in banks is a service story,” Rogers began. “Digital has been
around 15 years and its agenda and strategy was to take the costs out of all the other
channels.”
For Rogers, innovation is now core to banking culture with an ample appetite to
experiment with digital.
“But ‘service’ is not a customer experience, and it’s not what drives people back,” she
said.
So the first angle in reapproaching digital at ANZ, Rogers explained, was turning it into
a core strategy.
“Our history has been to invest in building up front-of-house at the digital virtual
branch and creating opportunities for customers to explore what ANZ is about and take
pathways to allow them to become customers,” she said.
The second part of the story was how the bank went about executing the strategy. Rather
than launching “great big programs that cost a lot of money”, she said that ANZ has
had success in creating smaller parcels of work with agile teams.
“We are now pushing hard into continuous delivery,” Rogers said.

4. Friction Points and the Threat of FinTech
Hemon-Laurens suggested that based on current estimates, up to 60% of the revenue
generated by banks trading in the ‘traditional’ manner will be “eaten up by FinTech.”
How are those conventional brands competing with this kind of compelling challenge,
Dempsey of GMC Software questioned the group around their investments in digital
products that will alter customer expectations.
One way explored by the group was to focus on eliminating friction points like onerous
interface and identity procedures while smoothing out the buying process; suggestions
met with general agreement from the group.
It was also noted that in looking to respond to the threat of FinTech startups, many
organisations were entering into partnerships with this market segment. This way,
organisations can attempt to tap into the best of breed with regards to customer
experience innovation.
Further, there was a consensus in the discussion that the speed with which customer
expectations are ‘reset’ has become a major point in devising digital strategy.
It is affecting how digital teams work and the skills they need to deliver.
“In this market you can’t set up a strategy and believe it will last five years,” Rogers
noted.

5. On top of challenges around speed, efficiency, and customer experience goals, the
group explored the challenges around “managing innovation”.
Traditionally, financial services organisations have been culturally risk-averse. Thus, if
senior management are conservative, it was an ‘uphill battle’ for disruptors inside the
organisation to get any momentum going on a project.
It was suggested that a focus derived from management priorities on short-term sales
was an impediment in sourcing realistic budgets for digital deliverables.
For Dempsey, the way in which buy-in in innovation can be derived comes from ensuring
that all projects look to create a transparent customer experience:
“Keeping a focus on developing an understanding of customer priorities in order to
define a seamless end-to-end experience is how you can achieve buy-in.”
Rogers added that at times digital projects are born from sitting outside of the
organisations larger IT fabric, which can be an issue in terms of innovation.
“We tend to shape and create things where it won’t trigger the ‘immune system’. The
younger digital natives are asking ‘why are we going so slow?’”
Bringing in key stakeholders right at the beginning – security amongst them – to work on
their input on a certain project was crucial, Rogers suggested.
Driving Digital Within a Large Organisation
Keeping a focus on developing an
understanding of customer priorities
in order to define an end-to-end
seamless experience is how you can
achieve buy-in.”
Nick Dempsey,
GMC Software
“

6. The Metrics of a “Good” Customer Experience
Organisations routinely put a number on operational expenditures and operational
efficiencies. As such, if customer experience innovation is to occur, it is important to
understand the metrics in which it will be measured.
This was a challenge that provoked a lot of discussion around the group, as
benchmarking success is important in driving great engagement.
One view – offered up as an example of the problem – was that the metrics of marketing
do not always convert to the same dollars as customer experience.
Rogers offered a different view saying “the power of digital gives you incredible insight
to what is going on with the customer.”
“Provided you have a baseline measure before you make a change, you should be able
to see what changes occur in the customer behaviour.”
Dempsey added the qualification that it would be necessary to have the right analytics
set up from the experience to make this model work.
“I think we (the financial services sector) often say customer experience is a bit hard to
measure but there’s so much data available now there is no excuse for saying ‘we can’t
measure it’.”
“The power of digital gives you
incredible insight to what is going
on with the customer,”
Claire Rogers,
ANZ

7. The group concluded that there is rich opportunity to transform the customer experience
in the financial services space.
The sector has the resources to create greater intimacy between business and customer
through driving innovative projects that change the customer’s perception of what a good
customer experience really means.
Still, moving forward is not only a matter of technology as in ‘hollowing out’ legacy
systems, rolling out new digital platforms or removing ‘friction points’ to gain competitive
advantage.
The dialogue found that the financial services sector might need to re-think its core
business in order to create a deeper, more satisfying user experience.
The complexity of certain products and the traditional values of ‘managing’ a customer’s
finance can no longer be taken for granted in a world where FinTech innovation has
reached its crescendo.
This creates an urgent need for internal disruptors and CXOs to adapt to a mutual
language of digital innovation.
Conclusion

8. About OmniChannel Media
OmniChannel Media is a digital publication and events
company that showcases the world’s best in technology,
innovation and disruption for the Australian C-Suite
(CXO) executive via Tech Exec.
OmniChannel Media also produces the “Disrupt Series”,
a series of free-to-attend conferences for C-Suite
executives.
About GMC Software
GMC Software helps companies communicate with their
customers and employees. We empower organisations
to create stronger engagements with timely and relevant
communications.
A Neopost Digital Company, GMC Software provides the
means for business users to develop contextual, highly
individualized communications across all channels that
span the entire customer journey.
A leader in customer communications, we support
over 1,600 clients and partners in banking, insurance,
healthcare and service providers around the world.