Developing Apps at the Speed of Trust

Let’s face it - trust in financial services industry has been deteriorating for some time now. In fact, according to research from Salesforce and Deloitte, almost half (47%) of customers don’t trust their own financial services provider. That’s pretty shocking considering we live in a time where there’s more personal data being generated than ever before. Establishing trust has become just as important as price and performance for every business or industry.

I recently met with Paul Chapman, Chief Executive and Founder, Moneytree during Dreamforce 2018 to get some insight into how businesses can build and maintain customer trust in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. If anyone knows about the importance of trust, it’s the team at Moneytree who are at the forefront of the open banking revolution.

“We see data as being owned by the customer, and democratising access to their information is a key requirement in open banking. This means we must be confident in our partners and their security,” said Paul.

Moneytree links all your financial information - from your bank accounts, credit cards and digital money to your points, superannuation and cash spending. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, Moneytree brings them all together in one place so you can review it easily. Naturally, when dealing with personal data at this scale, it’s paramount that customers trust you, which is evident in Moneytree’s success, with over 4 million app downloads globally.

So how can businesses and sales professionals build trust in today’s digital-age? Paul and I discussed a few actions you can do to build a culture of trust in your organisation.

1.    Establish the right principles

Salesforce and Deloitte found in their report, Restoring trust in financial services in the digital era, that an organisation’s trustworthiness is impacted by three pillars: ethical intent, capabilities and alignment to customer interest. The key thing here is that trust can’t be a one off campaign - it has to be a continued effort with strong intentions as a foundation.

Paul said that Moneytree is founded on the principle of ‘privacy by design,’ meaning that every decision they make as a business and every part of their service needs to have privacy at its core. It’s also ingrained into the fabric of the product itself - users need to provide approvals before Moneytree can access and share their data with third parties.

As sales professionals, this is something that we can learn from. Make sure trust and transparency are at the core of your sales process. For me, this means boosting your soft skills - face to face interactions and being transparent to customers with phone updates for instance. Anything that gives the customer a personal touch will help them trust you more.

2. Pick the right partners

Paul highlighted that trust can be created with the right partnerships, leveraging credible brands and proven technologies.

Creating strategic partnerships in the financial services industry is not just important to create personalised and exciting experiences for customers, it’s also a key step in maintaining trust. Moneytree enables banking service providers to personalise and tailor offerings and interactions to the benefit of the customer, which helps their users get value from the data they share.

Partnerships can also come in the form of collaboration. According to the State of Sales report, top sales teams share common metrics and data sources with the service team to break the silo mentality. Organisations are judged by the quality of their interactions more and more, and a united front will offer a more aligned and transparent business interaction.

3. Leverage the right technology

To actually action your ethical intents, it’s crucial to have the right technology and systems in place. Leveraging systems that allow you to get a full, transparent view of your end-to-end processes is key to this. According to Deloitte and Salesforce’s report, 53% of customers believe the digital experience with financial service providers needs improvement, so there’s definitely still work to be done in this area.  

Today, technology plays a big role in taking a salesperson to the level of “trusted advisor” for their customers. Leveraging technology to create surprising and engaging experiences for your customers forges a stronger relationship and a better environment to foster trust. For example, you could use AI technology to automate some of your sales admin while you get in more face to face consulting time with the customer or prospect.

These are just three of the methods Paul and I discussed to help establish trust between an organisation and its customers. There are so many ways you can achieve trust, but the most important thing to remember is that trust isn’t something you can just activate at the flick of a switch - it needs to be part of who you are as a company or as a sales professional.

If you’re keen for more insights on reinforcing customer trust in the financial services world, download Salesforce and Deloitte’s report Restoring Trust in Financial Services in the Digital Era. It explores the current trust climate in Australia and recommends how you can put customer trust higher on your agenda.