How to Change Your Banking Customer Experience Game

This piece is co-authored with Jeremy Lyon, Senior Solutions Consultant, ActionIQ

Having spent my career in Financial Services across all aspects of the MarTech space, I have some perspective on what makes for a successful software purchase process, and what makes a successful banking customer experience. With more than 15 years on the client side – ten at Global SI’s and other boutique consultancies and a couple of start ups along the way – I have seen a few faulty runs at onboarding hot new tech; I’ve also seen many incredible success stories.

The differences between success and failure is often strikingly simple and has to do with aligning prioritized business use cases and KPIs to capabilities–never the other way around.

Where Supporting the Customer Experience in Banking Starts

When you begin your software evaluation process focused on capabilities instead of starting with business priorities, teams risk falling victim to two traps. The first trap is looking across your stack and seeing that 80% of your business needs are met across different tools and so you stitch something together that is homegrown. The second trap is to purchase that “more affordable” solution that meets 80% of the business needs and so you try that and hope it drives results.

There are valid reasons that firms take these approaches, but they almost always are stop-gap in nature and are a near guarantee that business users will abandon the solution. The opportunity cost was abandoned here, while time, effort and money are now in the ether instead of your coffers. Sadly, another unintended outcome of taking this approach is that you lose trust in the business and morale/culture suffer.

How to Design a Successful Use Case for Optimal Customer Experience in Banking

Our new guide will help you steer your organization to success by building and delivering high-impact use cases. In this blog, we’ll give you a sneak peek into what you’ll get in the guide, including a breakdown of the characteristics of a successful use case, with a few samples to get you started.

Characteristics of a Successful Use Case

Successful use cases share many common elements; but take a closer look, and you’ll discover that successful use cases share two constructs: characteristics and context. Successful use cases have specific characteristics; and use cases exist in the context of supporting go-to-market strategies, business objectives and outcomes and key metrics and KPIs. Below, we’ll take a look at each construct and analyze an example use case to assess how well it adheres to these constructs.

Characteristics

Remember learning about sentence syntax in elementary school —- elements like subjects, verbs, and objects? Similarly, successful use cases have their own sentence structure; they include a role or persona; target audience; and a desired outcome.

Successful use cases are intrinsically linked to business objectives and outcomes; they’re laser-focused on compelling specific groups to take an action; and they’re always measurable. By definition, successful use cases are a means to an end; use cases should always act in support of increasing revenue, decreasing costs, improving operational efficiency, or reducing business risk.

Here’s an example use case that incorporates each of the elements described above:

As an Acquisition Marketer, I want to target an audience of site visitors who exhibit high intent behaviors to apply for a credit card, so that we can increase applicant conversion rates.

In our example, we’re focused on driving high-intent site visitors to apply for a credit card in support of increasing applicant conversion rates — and, by extension, the lifetime value (LTV) of the incremental conversions. Let’s break it down, so we can identify each element.

Context

Now that we’ve covered the characteristics of a successful use case, let’s talk about context.

First, successful use cases are measured against specific metrics and KPIs. Did the use case meet or exceed our targets? Did it drive an incremental lift in conversions or a reduction in customer acquisition costs? Did it reduce the number of hours required to deploy a campaign? If your use case isn’t measurable, how will you gauge its success?

Second, successful use cases — and their metrics and KPIs — are intrinsically linked to specific go-to-market strategies. Is it focused on increasing net-new acquisition through top-and-mid funnel growth? Is it focused on optimizing media spend? Is it focused on cultivating deeper engagement with high-value households?

Third, successful use cases, their metrics and KPIs and the strategies to which they’re linked must operate in support of the business’ highest priority objectives and outcomes. Full stop.

The diagram below illustrates this relationship:

Mapping use cases to metrics and & KPIs, strategies, and business objectives is critical and will place your use case within the context of the business’ highest priorities. Later in this guide, we’ll share how we advise and consult prospective customers and current customers through use case mapping.

What if you’re not sure whether your use case passes muster? Consider pressure-testing its viability against these questions below. If you find yourself struggling to answer one or more of these questions, revise your use case’s structure.

Sample Banking Customer Experience Use Case

Personal Loan Application Abandonment Retargeting

When high-intent site visitors start a personal loan application but leave before pressing submit, banks need to act on that moment. The consequence of inaction is fewer incremental personal loan applications and decreased potential loan value associated with the incremental volume.

This firm engaged with application abandoners – their target audience – via email with a call to action to complete their application in order to improve application completion rates. During its first six months in-market, this use case delivered nearly $500,000 in incremental revenue from incremental loan applications for a national bank with revenue of $9B.

Get the Complete Guide to Boosting Your Banking Customer Experience By Designing Successful Use Cases

Are you ready to uplevel your customer experience in banking?

In the Definitive Guide to Designing CX Use Cases in Banking, we break down how you can design use cases that will deliver results. You’ll see:

• What successful use cases look like for financial services
• Examples of successful use cases we’ve seen with financial service clients
• How we consult customers and prospective customers on use case mapping, definition, and prioritization