One of the most pivotal roles organizations play is connecting with customers on a social and emotional level. By using customer analytics and behavioral modeling, organizations can create relevant offerings that their customers want and need.
Your job is to create the right set of experiences for the purchase and use of your products and then integrate those customer experiences into your organization’s processes. This idea of process integration can be reframed into the focus of what matters most to your customer, or – better stated – what the customer values.
In retail banking, the five elements that are considered the most important are:
- Quality
- Providing Access
- Wealth Transference
- Avoiding Hassles
- Reducing Anxiety
These values can be a combination of emotional, functional, life-changing and social factors. So, when a customer says, “I bank with you because of convenience,” the value of this statement means you are saving them time (functional), making it simple to transact (functional) and you are reducing the effort it takes for them to conduct business (emotional).
Connect with your customer regarding what matters most to them at the time it matters most. Automate your marketing and respond to customer behavior quickly to maximize the impact of your communications.
For example, through research you have determined you have a segment of millennials who are consistently overdrawing their accounts at the point of sale. Rather than attribute this behavior to the irresponsibility of youth, you instead opt to send an email the next day that provides them with a convenience, hassle-free way to sign up for overdraft protection.
In another segment you find customers who have savings balances that average 3X the normal amount and you note which of these households have children, then every 90 days you send them an investment letter talking about heirloom investing.
Your ability to define a need based on real-time behavior, and then link that behavior to a service or sales opportunity, will be what sets your organization apart as a premier provider of quality.