By: Giovanni Castellanos

Many people believe that every point of contact (Touch Point) involves a personal interaction, but this is increasingly distant from reality because of the incorporation of technology into our daily lives, our activity is done through screens.In fact, it is estimated that 90% of today's banking relationship is done through a screen, whether this is our mobile device, computer, or ATM. Add to this that with the growth of IoT (Internet of Things) there will be even more devices from which we will be interacting with others, such as: digital assistants in smart speakers (such as Amazon Alexa), our car, the dishwasher, etc. These are new participants in the interaction with banks that increase the complexity of managing this ecosystem.

But, why should you pay special attention to your organization's customer journey? Because it is what will allow us to focus our efforts and improve customer experience step by step. 

I do not know of any bank that does not include improving customer experience in its corporate strategy. However, I do see that most of them consider that improving the experience translates to making an advertising campaign, launching a better app or giving a facelift to their bank branches, and although these are some actions associated to that effect, customer experience projects are intimately associated to processes and information systems, and even more to something that almost no one takes into account: the employee's commitment.

Customer experience is a change in the culture of the entire organization, as every process affects the customer experience. For instance, contracts or small print that customers don't understand or that ommit because they are difficult to read, are also a touch point that generate a positive or negative experience, although it's usually the latter. 

Customer experience uses the NPS (Net Promoter Score, also called Net Promoter System) as an almost standard metric worldwide. However, for this to translate into something useful for your institution, there must be other metrics that allow key teams within the organization to be measured and fed back on a systematic and consistent basis to evaluate the changes implemented and take corrective actions where applicable.

Institutions committed to providing their customers with a superior customer experience should start by establishing the highest level position such as the CCO (Chief Customer Officer), who should be responsible for defining the macro and micro strategies in line with the strategic objectives of the organisation and report to the company's leadership , but with transversal action, as each process within the organisation should be orchestrated to give the customer a superior experience.

In a world that operates in real time, and where our customers expect accurate responses in real time, we must have the ability to measure customer interactions as they occur. This means that the organisation should be able to evaluate a call centre or mobile banking interaction merely seconds after it happens. The technology to do this exists, as well as that to involve key teams to take action an follow up on these interactions. 

Customers convey their thoughts and feelings all the time and they either reward us by using our products, or punish us by using those from competitors because they feel that we do not value their relationship enough to respond to them. This means they do not see tangible benefits that drive them to say "I recommend my bank".

Customer experience is more than just a trend that we have to jump onto in order to not to be left behind; customer experience is about affecting customer behaviour through moments that drive loyalty and positively affect economic value for the organization and for the customer.