An emerging trend in retail banking in recent years has been the gradual shift in focus away from products and services towards a customer centric model, delivering simple, seamless, and sophisticated customer experiences.  

​Customers no longer view their experiences in an industry-silo as it is not just the Fintechs that are causing positive disruption. Consumers are now normalised to the user experience that the likes of Netflix, Airbnb and Amazon provide, and they are now demanding this from their financial services providers.

Customers increasingly want a digital-first, mobile service that is cohesive, simple, and engaging, giving them one place to manage their finances.

Consumer attitudes have been changing and customer expectations rising for a long time now, but the recent crisis has sharpened this into focus and accelerated the need for this change.

With COVID-19 pushing everyone towards digital channels, now more than ever banks need to:

• Examine how the digital book of work can be reprioritised to focus on the customer
• Redesign processes to consider the customer at every step when implementing change
• Replicate new digital, customer focused journeys across channels

A Simple & Seamless, Personalised and Proactive service is essential to consistently exceed customer expectations and build both the brand loyalty and trust that has proven difficult to cultivate since the financial crisis.

There are 9 key design principles outlined below that should underpin any digital change across the organisation to truly deliver an exceptional end-to-end customer experience.  

Customer experience design principles

If embedded throughout the customer journey these key design principles will transform the banking experience for customers. Now is the time to put into action all of the talk about putting the customer first, and to accelerate the culture shift to a customer – not company – first organisation.

The time to act is now

It’s no secret that attracting, satisfying, and retaining customers is becoming increasingly challenging.

The demand for a fast and flawless service continues to increase, fuelled by the rise of digital solutions and initiatives such as Open Banking. Due to the sheer amount of choice in the industry an exceptional customer experience is now a necessity – not a nice to have.

To remain relevant in this evolving marketplace, more and more frequently banks will have to differentiate themselves through their customer experience.

Improving customer journeys however is not a linear process. Ongoing interaction with customers will be critical to fully understand their evolving needs and expectations. A mantra of continuous-improvement will help foster a superior and sustainable customer-experience mind-set.

Beyond just knowing their customers better, organisations will need to use the knowledge and data acquired to personalise each interaction, provide seamless experiences across channels, humanise digital engagements and improve trust on an ongoing basis. This will be key to building and maintaining brand loyalty and being a market leader in the industry.

Banks must act now and embrace technology to become a truly customer-centric organisation.