What should the financial services sector be aiming to achieve? There are four key steps that can assist in truly putting the customer at the heart of everything a financial services organisation does and aims to fix the ‘broken’ enterprise operating model, writes Sean Tomlinson
Step one: identify the customer purpose
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As the first step to achieving a customer centric enterprise, financial organisations need to be really clear about the products and services they offer and how they are perceived by the current and target customer base. Different customer segments will almost certainly have different outcomes or purposes in mind for the same service. Therefore, banks need to understand who makes up their customer base and ensure there is a clear alignment between the three subsets of customer base; the actual; that targeted by marketing; and that desired by strategy.
Once they have clarity on the customers and the services on offer, it is then possible to identify the customer purpose for each permutation. This should be a simple statement of what success looks like for that customer. It should also be framed in terms describing what the customer can now do based on having achieved their customer purpose. Understanding what the customer can now do is incredibly important because it helps us to determine the end point of the service offering.
So let us clarify this to better understand what we mean by the customer purpose. Where, for example, a customer is looking to open a new online instant access savings account, the service doesn’t end when the customer has completed and submitted all the forms. Instead the end point is when the customer is able to achieve their purpose, which is to deposit money that is earning interest and to withdraw funds easily through all available channels.
So if the account provides access to use card withdrawals or make payments online, the purpose has not been achieved until; the customer has made a deposit into the account; it is attracting interest; the card has been fully activated with the ability to withdraw funds from it; and the customer can make payments online. There should be a target timeline for achievement described within the customer purpose and clear expectations should be set. This will ensure the customer understands exactly when they will be able to achieve their purpose and that their provider is working to achieve these timelines.
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By GlobalDataStep two: plan the customer journey
Once banks have defined a set of customer purposes, developing the customer journey by putting themselves in their customers’ shoes can be a powerful experience for executives to go through. Focusing always on achieving the customer purpose, an experienced facilitator can help executives to appreciate the pain of customers who have been failed by the organisation in the past.
Too often strategy mandates the customer journey teams to find ways to make the journey more efficient without experiencing the reality of this efficiency for themselves. Once they do, the focus on efficiency will be turned by the executive team into a focus on effectiveness, or in other words achieving the customer purpose.
Step three: build the services-based organisation
Whether functionally aligned or channel based (and often both) customer journeys typically flow across many of departmental silos, which have developed over time. In one example, the delivery of a contractual agreement to supply fund management services to a pension fund requires action or authorisation from 17 different departments. The scope for error and delay in this instance is enormous.
We spoke to one banking executive recently who admitted that organisational silos were a problem: "Yes we are siloed. We have a desire to break this down but there are no concrete actions as yet. The channels are in some respects competing so, for example, if there was an idea for the online channel to implement a programme that could help support the store channel or vice versa, they wouldn’t prioritise this."
There is another way. The first step on this approach is to define the services required for each of the customer journeys, including all channel variations. After defining the services required to support just a few customer journeys, organisations will find that many services can be reused across journeys.
Once banks have clarity on all their services it is then possible to rebuild the organisation structure around these, combining them to deliver the customer purpose in the most effective way. The aim of this approach is to change the unit of work from a process or a process step into a delivered service. It is outcome focused and the key measure of success should be the achievement of the customer purpose, not a step on the journey.
In building this service model against the customer journeys the whole organisation will understand how it supports the achievement of the customer purpose. Everyone will see how each moving part can support (or undermine) the implicit customer promise of the brand.
The primary objective of this service-oriented approach is not to create centres of excellence, which themselves could become silos, but to create centres of service focused on delivering the customer purpose.
Step four: provide cross channel access
Finally, when customers engage to achieve their customer purpose the channel is merely a means to an end, not an end in itself. There have been many channel initiatives where all the benefits are seen from the company point of view, rather than the customers’.
For example, there was a trend at the turn of the century to make web sites ‘sticky’ – to provide a reason for the customer to return again and again. What this forgot entirely was the customer purpose in returning. True stickiness is achieved by giving the user of the site what they want, not by artificial gimmicks. Other corporate goals should be secondary.
So if the channel is a means to an end, from the customer’s perspective, unless they have had very clear expectations set about which channels they can use, all channels should be available and the customer journeys should accommodate each of these channels. It should also be possible, where appropriate, for the customer to switch channels at any point.
It all starts with the customer, understand what they need, experience the service from their perspective and build your business around delivering your customer promise.
Sean Tomlinson, Head of Consulting, Financial Services Sector, Steria, a multinational IT services company headquartered in France
