When financial companies come to us, they’re looking to improve their customer experience. You may have a pretty clear idea of what that looks like: a modernized end-to-end journey that’s streamlined and intuitive. Or maybe you want to build a new feature or digital product to increase brand loyalty and drive better ROI. Even if you can envision your desired outcome, you may not know how to get there.
But one thing is certain: CX will be integral to your strategy. But what does that mean, practically? Before you partner with O3, here are some questions you can expect us to ask.
1. Have you spoken to your financial services customers yet?
This sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how often the answer is “no.” Or, even if the answer is “yes,” further probing reveals that the financial company has a different understanding of what meaningful customer feedback looks like.
You may have plenty of input from your customers, but it’s the specificity of their responses that is critical. The best user research vets new ideas or current experiences. For instance, your net promoter score or a customer satisfaction survey won’t capture the gaps and opportunities in the commerce experience or how your customer feels about a new product or feature.
Benchmark surveys can be part of a customer insight program, but interviews and moderated or unmoderated usability tests are just as valuable. Often, a customer isn’t able to articulate how their experience can be improved without a customer insight program to test and validate ideas.
Testing new ideas with your customer base can also unlock new revenue streams and inspire more intuitive experiences. O3’s customer insights program can get to the bottom of how to best meet your user’s needs with existing and future products and features.
2. Do you have a clear understanding of your customer journey?
From your brick-and-mortar to your website, to your mobile app, there are plenty of ways your customer builds awareness of or uses your product. However, those who reach out to us typically don’t own their company’s end-to-end customer experience (CX). They’re often product or marketing leaders who only own a piece of the experience — not every brand touchpoint in an ideal customer (IC) experience. But these touchpoints must all fit together in the customer experience ecosystem.
If you’re reaching out to us thinking you need a new product, stop to consider whether or not you have a solid understanding of how that product makes sense within the end-to-end journey. Our team can create a customer journey map to determine touchpoints and the gaps and opportunities therein. If your product vision doesn’t make sense within your journey, we’ll offer alternatives that do.
3. Are your internal stakeholders aligned?
You may appreciate the importance of voice of customer (VOC), but your c-suite may be a slower burn. They may think customers are in the driver’s seat, but when we actually speak with stakeholders, it’s clear they’re making assumptions about customer needs and goals that aren’t data-driven. Other times, your c-suite’s main objective is chasing competition or placating their biggest stakeholder.
O3 is the objective perspective you need to move the needle among your biggest stakeholders and make sure the customer has the last word.
4. Do you have a single view of customer, or does your data live in disparate systems?
Particularly with legacy financial institutions, data often lives in separate systems that make it harder to capture the entire customer experience. But the same is often true for younger companies that have grown substantially in a short period of time. Rapid growth can often lead to ad-hoc data systems that suit the needs of siloed departments, but not the entire company or its objectives. That’s because systems aren’t always built to talk to each other, and that can wear on your CX.
Ideally, you have a single view of customer (SVOC), where customer data is shared in a larger system that streamlines the customer experience and makes the interactions more personalized. Here’s an example: if your customer logs into their account to make a payment at the same time every month, an SVOC can capture that pattern and your app can then send that customer a personalized message about automatic payment options.
If you don’t have an SVOC, don’t fret. O3 conducts data audits to uncover all the possible locations where your customer data is stored. From there we can connect those data points into a single view leveraging a Customer Data Platform (CDP).
5. What tech do you use?
We can (and do) work with a lot of different tech, but it’s always helpful to know from the outset what your tech stack looks like. Within that stack, you might need engineering support, software development support, or help with accessibility.
Some tech we’re accustomed to working with includes:
- Content Management Systems (CMS)
- Digital Experience Platforms (DXP)
- Customer Data Platforms (CDP)
- Journey analytics tools
- Marketing automation tools
- Email automation products
If we collectively discover that your tech stack doesn’t meet the needs of your CX, we can design a stack to get it there.
6. Do you have brand guidelines and a style guide?
We occasionally receive inquiries from companies that hope to create a new product that’s ready for market within a short period of time. If that’s your goal, uniform branding standards and a style guide will help us execute UX design and development more efficiently. If you don’t have branding or style guidelines, your go to market strategy is likely to take much longer because our team will need to build them from scratch.
7. Are you comfortable with iteration?
If there’s one pearl of wisdom we could impart to our prospects before they engage with us, it’s that it’s better to start iterating with a product than to analyze it to death.
The more time you spend trying to make a product perfect, the longer you’ll postpone bringing it to market. And bringing your product to market is a better (not to mention more lucrative) use of your time than trying to get it just right.
Changing your mindset and releasing a product before it’s absolutely perfect isn’t easy. But when your product is in the hands of real customers, you can incorporate their feedback and insights to guide your iterations and improvements to better reflect real-time needs. Again, a little performance anxiety and perfectionism is normal, but too much will hamper your ability to change your products for the better.
Now you’re ready to engage O3
Whether or not you have model answers to these questions isn’t the point. We partner with clients at various stages of making CX paramount to their brand. The most important thing is that you have at least considered the points listed above so we can have an informed conversation about your financial services digital product. Ready to talk? So are we.