Last weekend I was looking for a fast broadband connectivity service for my home as my current service provider was unable to provide an upgrade in spite of multiple escalations. I found the answer in a new market entrant which offered the fastest, the cheapest and the most feature-rich service with the most convenient and fast onboarding process of less than 10 minutes. This was the experience I was looking for – completely personalized service, smooth and frictionless cross-channel onboarding process without any hassles.

I think for a truly engaging customer experience, the right product offered at the right moment and through the best channel creates a wow moment. This ensures a satisfied customer who can advocate and promote your product.

Today, customer experience is the most powerful force a business could use to win in the market. I believe in a customer-centric approach rather than a product-centric approach. Winning companies put their customers at the center, and this has time and again been proven by companies like Google in the search engine space, Apple in smartphone market, and Uber which has stunned the taxi-service market.

Creating a truly customer engagement experience is a necessity for any company today. If you achieve an engaging customer experience, you gain customer loyalty which can be a major competitive differentiator for your business instead of competing just on price. However, it is important for a company to understand any pain points and remove any systemic or process issues faced by customers while interacting with your company. In case of banking services, the gap in customer experience can be closed by introducing self-service application to address routine questions instead of making the customer wait in contact center queues. Also one can explore launching chat-bots to address customer questions. The main hurdle is to improve your customers’ chosen way of interacting with you.

With all this in mind, here are a few suggestions for anyone looking to develop a strategy for new business attitude called customer experience.

• Experience is always personal. So think carefully before introducing a new technology-driven feature or removing process steps, and understand how different customer segments will react to the variation. Not all customers have an up-to-date technology to take advantage of frictionless experience built around the latest mobile apps or devices. You have to offer contextual experiences on preferred channels to early adopters as well as other customers who could be fast-followers of technology or even laggards. You need to plan for training and support when introducing changes to ensure that there are no surprises.
• Just do it right. In the name of providing frictionless experience your organization should not move away from the customer. You may eliminate or automate some steps in the process but it should not distance a company from its customers by removing human touch. It is absolutely important to give an opportunity to your customers to interact with humans who understand their needs and can empathize with them. Automation is necessary but it should support human interaction. Human touch should not be removed completely.
• Be flexible. In any industry, you create ‘wow’ moments when you help people with uncommon requests, or surpass their expectations by going beyond the norm. It is important to not have rigid approaches which can work against employees and prevent them from using their own creativity to deliver the best service. You need to create an eco-system to allow your employees to do things differently when required.

If an organization wears an attitude of customer experience as a business strategy at all touch points, it can deliver wonders in customer service. To deliver the right experience, technology is an important enabler that companies can use to define flexible processes accurately and design services such that they are not devoid of a human touch.

A popular perception is that companies can drive innovation and build great products by talking to and seeking regular and timely feedback from potential and existing customers. While this may sound reasonable, unfortunately it is not true. Building a great market-leading product requires more than that. It needs something called “a product DNA”.

Most of us love music. But can most of us describe music in a manner that if someone composes it as per our liking or interest, then we will like it for sure? All we do is develop fondness (or dislike) for certain kind of music once someone composes it.

Similarly, most customers cannot describe how your product should look like or what they really need. If you create a product, then they may like it or dislike it.

If mobile phone manufacturers had conducted a survey about the features customers want in their mobile phones in the 90s, the most probable answers/requests would have been: Increase in battery power, more storage for address/contacts, Increased size of text messages and address book retrieval if the phone is lost. In all likelihood, a smart phone wouldn’t have been a preference or suggestion as part of the survey findings. Not by any single customer. Not by the entire set of survey respondents collectively.

Similarly, if a survey of customers of dot matrix printer was carried out they would have in all probability come up with demands like faster printing rate, multiple paper sizes, printing on both sides of paper or color printing. None of them would have come up with a description of laser printer.

So, essentially neither the sum of all customer feedback would have helped produce an innovative product feature set nor individual feedback. The popular perception that customer feedback is the foundation of innovation is potentially false.

Sometimes a product is an outcome of an objective and sometimes it is a consequence of an unrelated objective. A classic example of objective-based outcome is the most efficient search engine on the block – Google – developed by Larry Page and Sergei Brin. Driverless car is also an example of objective-based outcome. A great example of consequence-based product is Amazon Web Services. It is a consequence of the technology Amazon built to run its flagship product – the Amazon e-commerce web site. Or consider the phenomenon that led Percy Spencer to the invention of a microwave. Percy was experimenting with a radar related vacuum tube when a candy bar in his pocket started melting and he applied this knowledge to build the prototype for a microwave.

To build a successful product, a company needs product-centricity in its DNA. It needs a product-mindset and skill. This influences the entire process of product creation right from ideation, calculation and estimation of market potential, through to execution. Let us see what “product DNA” really means and why it pays a key role in product development:

• Ideation:

During the ideation phase, the ability to come up with product requirements is considered as the Product DNA. The idea may be an outcome of a general observation of a current problem, it may address future problems or it could be a technology innovation to improve the efficiency of an existing solution.

The ability to assess requirements based on general observation and come up with an innovative solution is best illustrated in Levi Strauss’s discovery and the consequent apparel invention. Strauss observed that the jeans of the gold mine workers were all tattered due to the weight of sand. He riveted the pockets and patented the same. Most of the times these kind of scenarios don’t require any major research investments.

On the other hand, driverless cars and most of the stuff Elon Musk does, fall under this category of potential solutions to “future problems”. These kind of problems usually require major research and sometimes infrastructure investments.

Job search portals, matrimony sites, auction marketplaces and other similar online platforms that came up after the world wide web gained popularity are classic examples of using new technologies to increase the efficiency of existing solutions.

The ability to see what customer needs without the customer explicitly telling you is an essential trait of what I call the “Product DNA”.

• Calculating Market potential:

There is no free lunch in life and especially in business. Investors are driven by revenues. So whatever you build should generate revenue for the investors.
Calculating market potential and growth prospects becomes extremely difficult when there is no precedence for the product that you are developing. On top of it, need and want are two different things. Just because a customer needs something, doesn’t necessarily mean he wants it and he will pay for it.

The ability to see the impact of the product on the customers when there are no existing customers/precedence, and foreseeing how to transform the need of the customer to a want is one of the essential traits of “Product DNA”.

• Execution:

While I do not undermine the value of an idea, conceiving an idea is the easiest thing. Ninety nine percent of the success of a product depends on execution.

The first mover advantage doesn’t really guarantee prolonged market leadership. There were several established search engines before google. Google beat them all by building a search engine that was technologically superior to others. The rise of Facebook and the demise of Orkut is also an example that proves this.

Customer feedback becomes effective once the product is in the market. Facebook started as a college bulletin board but morphed into social media platform based on the customer feedback/demand and their observation of customer needs.

Patience, constant and continuous meaningful innovation is integral to Product DNA traits during the execution phase.

Summarizing, the traits exhibited by an individual or company who successfully address the challenges mentioned above during the ideation, market potential estimation and execution phases is what Product DNA is. History is witness to the fact that all successful product companies have invariably displayed the above traits.

There has been a lot of buzz around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in recent years, specifically in the areas of fraud management and customer service. The ability to assess customer behavior across social media platforms, ecommerce platforms and even browsing histories has made these improvements possible. Google with its search engine, Amazon with its product recommendations or Facebook with customer specific news feed pioneered the usage of AI & ML.

Have you ever wondered how, if you search for a product on a website, the same product keeps on featuring as an advertisement on all the other websites if you use Chrome as your browser? How Netflix or Amazon prime can recommend the movies or sitcoms to watch based on history, usage and other preferences? Have you ever wondered how your Gmail inbox is automatically able to filter spams and tag mails as social or promotions? Gmail uses a complex algorithm coupled with ML using the subject lines, links (if any) in the mail and historical handling of such mails along with user’s contact lists to filter and tag. With artificial intelligence and voice assistants such as Alexa, the same can be applied to speech recognition.

The other day I was trying to book a hotel for family vacation through one of the online travel portal apps. For the exact same room and other specifications, it showed me different prices since it used two different user IDs, and hence different past preferences, bookings and spending history. And this was at the exact same time.

While most of the above use historical data with complex algorithm and use what we call rule-based or supervised ML; for certain predictions like shopping recommendations they also use association learning or even clustering as part of unsupervised ML. Thus Gmail can apply filtering label, Facebook can customize feed, or any card management company can apply labels to any particular transaction such as “fraudulent” or “good”, based on the transaction data and history available. However, when we apply this rule-based supervised machine learning to complex scenarios where the data may not be clean or where the data is huge and sourced from multiple places online or offline, with no specific labels available, un-supervised ML using auto encoder neural networks which can self-learn, needs to be applied. This is specifically beneficial in reducing false alarm rates which plague the card transaction industry where transactions originate from multiple sources like e-wallets, e-commerce platforms, m-commerce etc. As per a study, around 35% of digital card transactions through large retailers flagged as fraud were found to be false positives resulting in loss of customer trust and business. It cost USD 8.6 Billion of declined order cost to the merchants in 2016. Such false positives can be greatly reduced using the cognitive approach to ML which does not require labeling of datasets, can consider new data on the fly and learn and predict with higher accuracy.

AI and ML can also be effectively applied to traditional payments, be it domestic or cross border through local payment schemes or global schemes like Swift.

Consider the scenario from a fraud detection perspective where a person planning for a foreign destination vacation transfers money in foreign currency to two different vendors where each foreign currency transaction amount is just below the local regulation threshold. Similarly, another person does the same keeping the transaction value below the threshold to deflect and discourage any suspicion and scrutiny that might reveal that the payment is being made for money laundering purposes. A rule-based machine learning system based on historical transaction data may not be able to pick such differences and may tag both transactions as fraud/AML in which case the first payment transaction would be a false positive. However, an unsupervised ML based AML system along with AI which can continuously learn, could provide real-time prediction with higher accuracy and may be able to differentiate between the two transactions.

As part of a Finextra survey with a partner, respondents highlight inefficiencies in handling repairs and 48% highlight inefficiencies in handling investigations. A whopping 62% of respondents highlighted that they have not applied any AI till date to exceptions and repairs.

A combination of cognitive and rule-based supervised machine learning can be applied to any inbound or outbound payment not just for fraud or AML management but also for cases of repair or data enrichment while processing any payment. Most likely causes of a payment failing validations and going into repair queue are incorrect or missing information in the message like BIC address, special characters, incorrectly formatted remittance information, incorrect identification details of customers like account etc. These digitally enabled checks are particularly important to maintain high STP rates. It’s critical as the industry is moving towards immediate and real time payments and settlement of funds, and not only are the costs of manual intervention and repair significant for banks but they also cause significant delays specifically in a cross border scenario. Another research attributes 80% of the processing cost of transactions to exceptions and repairs. It suggests that with an average rate of exceptions at 20%, a single point decrease in exception rate can decrease the cost by 4%.

One important underlying factor in using AI and ML is that data is key and especially the richness of it from a payment processing perspective. The data format of a payment instruction should have sufficient information for any of the AI and ML models to assess and derive value for banks and Fintechs. Adoption of ISO2022 as the global standard for payment messages would facilitate this since extensive information related to remittance can be embedded in the rich data fields it supports.

While the jury is still out on the significance and the scale of usage of AI and ML, and on the most effective way to harness these technologies in banking and financial services, the possibilities and probable benefits that these technologies offer are immense.

References:

Over the last few decades, banks have largely focused on digitization of retail banking. There has been very limited focus on digitization of corporate banking. Now, because of the increasing demands from corporate customers and the overall innovations happening in the space, banks are forced to relook at their corporate banking services and accordingly define their strategy for the future.

Banks looking to enhance their corporate banking solutions and services will have to undergo a complete digital transformation covering both front end (channels including mobile) and back end systems. As part of this journey banks should focus on some of the below mentioned areas:

• Digitize the Customer Journey
  • Customer Onboarding and Lending processes – In retail banking, banks have invested in digital channels – online/ mobile where customers can apply for a facility and get instant approval. The next wave is to digitize the process for corporates. Banks need to allow their corporate and SME customers to get instant approvals for their applications. SMEs could probably be a good starting point, subsequently followed by mid-market and large corporates. They need to also enable enhancement requests from their customers.
  • Cash Management – Corporate treasurers today deal with multiple bank relationships across multiple time zones. Banks needs to increasingly focus on providing platform in the channels where corporates can streamline the payments process, provide cash forecasting for effective working capital management, lending and investment decisions, virtual account for reconciliation of transactions and provide real time pooling and sweeping capabilities.
  • Trade and Supply Chain Finance – Banks should bring the corporates, their suppliers, vendors and other players like transporters, insurers, etc. for transparent and real-time processing of transactions. Additionally, they should enable corporates to rely on electronic channels where they can initiate the transactions such as request for letter of credit, attach supporting documents.

Digitizing the customer journey will change the way relationships are managed giving relationship managers more time to focus on other value added services like advisory.

• Augment the back end processes
  To improve the overall corporate customer experience banks needs to also focus on augmenting the back end processes; automate them using OCR, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Implementing OCR can automate reading data from a request for example a loan request / application, trade finance services like letter of credit, and bank guarantee.

  Banks should look at straight through processing reducing the turnaround time, resulting in operational efficiency and reduced cost for banks.

 

• Data Analytics
  Banks have heaps of customer data about their corporate customers which if used properly can add and provide insights both to the customer and back-end user using analytics. Banks should invest in analytics tools which can enable RMs to offer relevant offerings best-suited to their customer, cross-sell additional products, and retain key customers. Similarly, it can help customers manage their business. For e.g. cash forecasting capabilities can help customers better manage their working capital requirements.

To summarize, banks must invest in digitization and have a differentiated offering for their corporate customer. They need to formulate a clear strategy to have an edge over other banks in the corporate banking space who are their traditional competitors and also FinTechs trying to foray into the space.

It is the question we hear every time we start a re-imagination journey for any module. Will it ever become pretty, and provide a standardized and consistent “wow” experience? Will it be like Facebook or LinkedIn?

First, deciders aren’t users

It is like the first bicycle that my dad bought me – I couldn’t test ride since I didn’t know how to; I couldn’t choose because the money wasn’t mine and I couldn’t argue the choice, because between the two of us I was clearly not the bigger or the older one.

In the business world, the experience that fascinates purchase decision makers like CXOs/IT heads might not be the same that eases the life of an employee. Some colorful dashboards or fancy features are ‘Wow’ for CXO demos, but the IT specialist might want all validations covered everywhere. Unfortunately, the wow of an easily executable simple feature doesn’t often translate into good business metrics to impress buyer decision makers. Moreover, the rare and few usability tests that are done, are conducted with existing users who have probably found a way to perfectly execute simple things in complex systems.

There is no Skip button

Facebook tries to sell stuff to me and I can conveniently skip it. I can be really annoyed about sponsored search results in Google, paid posts in Facebook and ad breaks in the middle of YouTube videos, but I have an option to never click the sponsored links.

It is not the same for enterprise app users though. The most simple and intuitive flows for the end-user might not be great for the company’s bottom-line. ‘Skip Customer Insights’ is a good option for me as a teller with a long queue, but then, there is a loss of a conversation or cross-sell opportunity that is bad for business.

As much as we claim them to be seamless, force-fitting interventions in the flow is often a pain. Smart users might find shortcuts to skip them and find new ways of using the product. The not-so-smart ones may get highly skilled with a nasty application flow and then even resist the change in this pattern.

And then there is the exact opposite of this – enterprise applications that are purely meant for task completion. Everyone sees everything and all kinds of complications are part of the same flow; which brings me to the next point:

It is not the same thing for everyone

There is only ONE version of the product in most B2C products, except for few customizable preferences. But enterprise users often in a specific role do the same set of things over and over again and don’t touch the bulk of the rest of the application. And it is totally different from another set of users using the same product in the same bank.

This reflects in the way performance is measured as well – a higher page load time may be acceptable for the back-end user if system does more validations. This might be an annoyance for the frontend user frantically searching for the customer’s open service request when a customer is standing right in front of him.

And hence the standardization question – Why is this flow not the same across channels/roles? Quickly creating a prospect is highly important when a customer expresses interest in a product on the Internet; but no customer walks into a branch to give just their name and phone number! We need to judge how much of the paper application form we really need to capture right away in the system to create intelligent prompts.

Legacy OR the big elephants in the room

Sometimes ‘Digital Transformations’ are not as pretty as we would want them to be –enterprise applications don’t change dramatically overnight. The earlier transformations might have just moved things from pen and paper to a system and retained the exact same process. There might be hundreds of costly systems in the bank that haven’t moved at the same pace. And unlike android updates, the upgrades don’t come for free and banks don’t change hardware every 2 years. There will be older versions, older integrations and older customizations.

Do we refuse to even get inspired?

Of course not, but replicating elements needs much deeper thought and understanding of the real user. And if we do understand our users, we need better ways to articulate it to those who make decisions for them!

Blockchain is one of the emerging technologies which has evolved over time significantly. Industry predictions suggest that the space is expanding. With new blockchain-based startups mushrooming, more investments are likely in blockchain-based startups. Not just in banking, blockchain has its place in various other industries like health care, real estate, manufacturing etc. Due to their secure nature, blockchain based smart contracts are considered as an innovative and path breaking technology to adopt.

Banking is one of the fields which constantly looks out for innovation and newer technologies. Some of the areas where blockchain can be adopted are loans, syndication, trade finance, payments, clearing and settlement to name a few. These involve multiple parties, exchange of documents, and several validations related to documents.

Typically, banks face issues in adopting new technologies. This in turn leads to a lag and in some cases a change of strategy. Some of the reasons for the challenges banks face or for their failure in adoption of certain technologies could be –

• Adopting a technology in an attempt to market themselves as early adopters but without a proper strategy or game plan
• Hiccups during implementation of the technology
• Huge investment in infrastructure
• Lack of trained people to implement the technology
• Lack of knowledge to trouble shoot issues encountered after implementation
• Consensus between the parties involved to use the technology, as blockchain is driven by multiple parties and not by a single party

Adopting not just to Blockchain but any new technology requires high investment and resources. After the initial excitement, many technologies have faced sunset in the past due to multiple reasons like cost, availability of resources, security, infrastructure etc. Some steps that can be taken to mitigate the risk of adopting blockchain technology are –

• Identifying the areas where blockchain can be used. The initial analysis is worth the time which goes a long way in arriving at a consensus and clear decision to go for the technology or not.
• Simulating the pre and post adoption of the technology to know qualitative and quantitative benefits from the technology
• Strategize and define milestones for the transition
• Define steps to achieve the adoption of the technology
• Induction of personnel trained in blockchain
• Conducting training programs on the technology to the employees
• For the identified areas outsourcing or going with partners can be cost effective in order to avoid initial investment and cost

Blockchain initiatives involve multiple parties for each transaction. In order to have likeminded organizations / banks willing to take up the technology, collaborative training programs for the personnel, and agreements can be put in place to route multi-party transactions among the agreed organizations and banks. These are some of the ways which can be looked at to make blockchain adoption beneficial and convenient to adopt. According to NASSCOM blockchain report 2019 on Global and Indian blockchain market, Public and BFSI sectors are driving blockchain adoption in India with BFSI leading the adoption. Given the technology’s multiple benefits of immutability, transparency and real-time processing, it is finding wide application in myriad use cases that require tracing a product / asset to its origin. These applications include grocery supply chains, real estate, and more. Infosys recently helped a coffee supplier increase acceptance of its coffee beans among certifying bodies, and made the entire supply-chain and payments process simpler using blockchain. Clearly, other industries are not far behind in adopting blockchain.

Like any other technology, blockchain too has flip sides like high cost and infrastructure, energy consumption for processing. With reports on frauds related to blockchain, the susceptibility of blockchain for security breaches should also be tested to understand the vulnerabilities before taking a strategic decision and plunge. This can save enterprises huge costs and resources.

References –

• https://www.newgenapps.com/blog/future-of-blockchain-technology-applications
• https://www.crypto-news.in/news/public-sector-bfsi-driving-blockchain-adoption-india-nasscom-report/
• https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612974/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked

Digital Empathy for the Color Blind

“Blue is the richest color for me” Mark Zuckerberg told The New Yorker.

“I can see all of blue.”

According to The New Yorker, Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind. The color he sees best is blue.

What does this mean?

Zuckerberg can see things as clearly as other people; however, he is unable to fully see red or green light.

We now know why blue happens to be the color that dominates the Facebook website and mobile app!!!

What is color blindness? Does it impact one’s ability to perceive colors?

I got curious to understand it further.

Color blindness or Color vision deficiency is the reduced ability of human eye to distinguish between shades of certain colors, mostly red or green or sometimes blue and yellow.

The below is an image of kite perceived in normal vision vs. color blind vision.

One can observe that the visual palette for a color blind does not perceive red and green as distinct colors.

This poses challenges in multiple spheres of daily life where indications are based on colors, for example traffic lights, reading maps, buying clothes.… the list is long!

Imagine how Facebook would appear to its CEO if it was red or green!

I googled to understand more.

Google! Does it ring a bell?

Google logo is heavy on colors!

My instant thought was how a color blind would perceive this logo. And here it is…

Google logo perceived by a person with normal vision.

Google logo perceived in case of less sensitivity to Red
(Protanopia)

Google logo perceived in case of less sensitivity to Green
(Deuteranopia)

Google logo perceived in case of less sensitivity to Blue
(Tritanopia)
(Image source)

That is the Google logo perceived by color blind eye based on the degree of sensitivity to colors!

Statistics reveal that color blindness affects 8% of males and 0.5% of females globally.

This means that about 8 out of every 100 visitors to a website or an app may not be viewing or experiencing the information and color-based indications as they are meant to be.

Being a banker by profession, I pondered on the many color blind customers who access the digital channels or apps for performing the banking transactions.

My reading led me to understand that banks can adopt holistic and inclusive design practices that are color-blind-friendly and provide a common user experience.

Given below are few good design practices (not exhaustive) gleaned from my reading and experience.

Supplement colors with symbols and text

The image below provides dashboard view of the total expenses incurred by a customer for a period based on transactions in the bank account.

The bank has provided symbols and descriptive text against every colored legend. The customer can hover on any particular color in the chart to understand the category with value. Additionally, textures and patterns in graphs would be even better!

Use text along with colors for alert messaging

The image depicted on the left is for applying for saving account using mobile banking app. Here green line indicates a successful entry and red calls for the attention of the customer to input data.

A color blind customer may not recognize the color of lines; however, the supporting text signals an alert for input of required data.

Avoid problematic color combinations

Certain color combinations such as red and green, green and brown, green and grey, are a nightmare to the color blind. Avoid using these combinations while designing websites as it gets hard to interpret the information.

Use color blind simulators

There are color blind simulators (e.g. Color Oracle) using which designers can perceive how a color blind will experience the design.

Integrate with bot

Banks can integrate their digital platform with voice assisted bots or chatbots that guide and help accomplish tasks or fetch information with natural language.

Design for accessibility

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. laid out by the World Wide Web consortium lists the guidelines for users to access and use web content equally.
A few banking websites such as Bank of America (Source), HSBC private banking (Source), J P Morgan (Source), also have a webpage dedicated to accessibility.

My final thoughts

There has been a rising influence of digital in banking and financial services.

The global mobile banking report published by KPMG with UBS evidence lab, reveals the number of mobile banking users globally is forecast to double to 1.8 billion over the next four years.

One can deduce the proportion of color blind customers accessing banking channels in this overall number based on global statistics.

It is imperative that design teams at banks are cognizant of the challenges faced by color blind people. Every customer counts. A frustrating experience can lead to lost conversion and sale.

So what if there are problematic color combinations that need to be excluded?

There are a lot more colors on the palette that can drive creativity yet foster accessibility!!

References:

• edition.cnn.com
• color-blindness.com
• usabilla.com
• wcag2.0
• inside-design
• disabled-world.com

Banks can devise various policies and strategies for customer experience, but at the end of the day, it boils down to only one basic thing – Are these strategies and steps really resulting in the improvement of customer experience?

In this blog post we look at a few important elements of customer experience enhancement for real tangible results.

• Reimagining customer journeys for the digital world

With the world going gung-ho about digital experience, what exactly does a customer look out for when he/she signs up with a bank which claims to offer distinguished experience as a result of customer journey reimagination efforts of the bank? The ease with which a customer is able to fulfil his/her banking requirements so that his/her business and day-to-day activities are not affected makes a difference. Ideally, the customer’s time shouldn’t be spent doing banking transactions. To that end, nearly all leading and progressive banks are reimagining journeys to offer contextual services, products and advice across existing channels such as mobile, new channels such as voice assistants and channels yet-to-emerge such as intelligent devices.

• Immersive experiences with digital technologies

The banking requirements of a small business owner differ from that of a trade finance customer or that of a salaried person. Different customers have different requirements. Banks catering to various segments with personalized digital experience definitely can be pioneers in the field of digital technologies. For example, an employer would want to upload and distribute salaries on the last day of the month at his time and convenience without any dependency on this bank. Similarly, an exporter/importer needs to perform his trade-transactions timely in a safe, secure and cost-effective way. Now exporters and importers can employ blockchain technology which is the safest and the most secure technology on the block, without any intervention from a bank. A retail customer would want to get a loan sanctioned with minimum paper work and approvals and with the click of a button.
The customer may not be a subject matter expert. But the customer needs to be provided the most convenient ways to perform everyday transactions using the most user-friendly interfaces and technologies. Also, one needs to understand that a baker’s dozen holds prominence even today.

• Essentials of a successful customer journey program

Every customer journey needs to embody the following principal points – simple Interface capability, effective implementation timelines, inbuilt validations to mitigate risk, cost effective solutions, easy-to-use banking experiences, and an exciting loyalty program. These are some of the essentials of a successful customer journey program.

• KPIs for customer experience in the digital world

KPIs are used by key bank personnel to gauge the overall performance of the employees or the products. KPIs and metrics for the level of customer satisfaction/attrition can provide banks a clear picture of the results of the customer experience initiatives and effort, allowing them to align, adjust or course-correct their policies and strategies.

• Redesigning customer journeys in corporate banking

Corporate customers generally hesitate to switch banking relationships. A bank who can simplify a corporate customer’s journey is sure to find a loyal customer for a life time.  Banks should provide their customers secured channels and platforms to carry on business transactions. Easy-to-use upload formats for bulk uploads are a must-have feature for a decent digital experience.

All said and done, it is also imperative that digital experiences complement the traditional human touch in banking. A bank may employ a chat bot or any other kind of virtual assistance for quick real-time banking, but bankers who can empathize with a customer and his/her goals and priorities are equally important. At the end of the day, only when the end customer’s journey and consequently the overall experience is simplified and contextualized, does the bank really leave a mark behind.

Let me start with a disclaimer and a couple of definitions:

The disclaimer:

I am a tee-to-tal-er and by that definition I do not advocate consumption of alcohol in any form!

And now couple of definitions:

• Mocktail:
  Cocktails are alcoholic drinks made by mixing alcoholic drinks with soft drinks, fruit juices or other alcohols. Mocktails are non-alcoholic drinks made by mixing different fruit juices, iced tea or soft drinks. Mocktails are so named because they mock the cocktails i.e. they look like cocktails but are non-alcoholic (source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-mocktail-and-a-cocktail )
• For the purpose of this blog, anything that is original is a cocktail and the one that is derived, or mocks or is a variant of the original is a mocktail. For e.g., physical store businesses: cocktail, eCommerce: mocktail!

Digitalization has touched almost every aspect of our life in some or the other way and we see a lot of innovation driven by digitization. But a quick look at it also reveals that most of the innovations actually mimic, mock or are derived from the already existing ways of doing things. They just elevate the same to next level.
Swiggy, zomato probably can trace their genesis to the unique dabbawala services of Mumbai.
eCommerce is the digital extension of what we saw in the form of super markets, departmental stores.
And now, digital only banks – they are bringing the eCommerce behavior on top of traditional banking experience to bring the best of both the worlds together.

Digital mocktail:
Mocktail provides a lot more variety and the possibility to customize and personalize at an affordable cost which roughly translates to what digital banking is doing now.
Digital banking thrives on technology to provide quite personalized banking experience stemming out of core banking services and thus is able to create variants swiftly and at a reasonable cost.

I tried understanding what I call the mocktail vs. cocktail phenomenon further, and what became increasingly clear to me is that due to the advent of mocktails and their acceptance, a new customer segment has emerged. What is also noteworthy is that mocktails can be consumed anywhere, anytime which makes it is a must-have at most places.
Similarly, in digital banking, cross-channel and multi-channel digital service appeal to the next generation of users and allow them to bank anytime, anywhere at their convenience.

Now let’s see this analogy from a different and interesting perspective.
We have seen that most places which are licensed to offer cocktail, do offer mocktails but the vice versa is not true. The former take pride in their core offering. Mocktails are offered as an add-on to prevent losing some of the customers who accompany the core customers!
Do I see such a mind set with some of the traditional banks, to an extent? The answer is yes, isn’t it?

Extending this further, some things just get better with time and so are some banks which have put in years of service to be known for their specialized and niche offering. This is where they probably command premium which basically means that it takes a while to build expertise and branding around it.

Platformification in banking allows new-gen banks to offer lots of variety, and at times they spread too thin to offer everything under the sun. This is probably where customers who look for specific and specialized skillset may not find what they are looking for.

Hence it is important for banks to identify their true strength, real needs of their customers and thus accordingly plan what they need to offer – a cocktail and a mocktail, only mocktail or a hybrid!

And whether cocktail or mocktail or both, what really matters for banks is to serve their customers with the best and provide value for money.

So what’s going to be your drink?