Use Customer Journeys to Break Silos

Digital thinking in banks can take two paths – use digitization to cut costs, improve efficiencies, transform sales & service into an end-to-end digital process. Or, use customer journeys to design, develop and deliver what customers want.

The first approach is an inside-out approach. Typically, an inside-out bank asks itself questions such as:

• What are the strengths of our people? What are our market winning products?
• How do we build on our strengths and eliminate our weaknesses?
• How will a decision benefit the bank?
• Which department should I channelize my resources to?

For long, banks have communicated ‘their’ idea of digital to their customers. What has led to this thinking? And will this work going forward?

Cost optimizations and focus on ROI

Banks routinely take decisions which focus often narrowly on maximizing efficiency and saving cost. Most ambitious projects are initiated with an ROI target, which focuses squarely on the present or at best a year. Resources are rarely utilized with a long-term focus. Their templated approach questions emerging concepts and fails to appreciate evolving market dynamics. It’s not only the finance department which puts a lid on new ideas; being in a highly regulated industry, other control groups chime in making a worthwhile investment look like a dud.

Siloed thinking

Large banks are typically siloed. Product development, marketing, sales, operations, digital channels, technology all work in their own insulated bubbles. Bursting the bubbles and working as a team is often challenging, if not impossible. It takes a leader at the highest levels to hold together an idea and see it through esp if it involves multi-functional teams. This needs a high degree of planning, alignment of mindsets, commitment to time and effort and a single-minded pursuit of the common goal. This is hard and unglamorous work. Therefore, most improvements are seen inside a department without caring much about the inter-dependence between functions and processes. This almost always leads to sub-optimal results and does not translate into a clear customer benefit.

I-know-it-all

The two biggest threats to an idea are over-reliance on an individual’s experience and the organization’s past successes. Changes are undertaken with little or no customer research. The insights used are mostly the experiences of the project sponsor and the project lead; who have gained these experiences while running day-to-day operations. These unvalidated assumptions of what’s best for customers lead to a faulty plan, a poor product and process design, and risks rolling out features which customers don’t want, need or use. Moreover, such features often meet with stiff resistance from the sales and service staff who are ill at ease with the new changes. Being the ones in direct touch with the customers, they feel the pointlessness of the whole exercise.

There is no doubt that banks have come a long way in their digital journey following (largely) an inside-out approach. But the changing ecosystem is forcing them to adapt to the new realities of robotics, cognition, open banking and blockchain. Progressive regulators and agile fintechs are transforming the landscape faster than legacy systems can change. Banks today understand the interplay between the future technologies, but escaping old mindsets is difficult.

How should the incumbent banks navigate the new reality? How should they develop an outside-in thinking running through the organization? Here’s a 5-step approach to achieve that.

1. Pick the right customer journey based on customer and business priorities

Incumbent banks will find it difficult to make large course corrections in a short time. Hence, they should pick up journeys which are critical to their business success and are important for their customers too. For example, opening an account digitally in a few minutes without visiting a branch or making photocopies of KYC documents. Or being able to smartly spend, save and invest, all with the click of a few buttons. Or a journey which supports a life event like buying a car or a house.

2. Map the current process with the ideal process

Use customer journey maps to understand various elements of the end-to-end value chain and identify key components which need change. For example, you may find that the customer may not have access to online and real time help when she faces an issue. What would you do to make it right?

3. Use the journey in designing the new experience

Get a cross functional team to brainstorm and design the new experience. This breaks internal resistance and brings buy-in of different owners in the value chain. Everyone gets an understanding of the customers’ emotional context and the final solution turns out to be far better than what a siloed approach would bring.

4. Develop the digital asset

Use agile teams to prototype and build an MVP. Agile development works well in improving an existing customer journey by breaking it into manageable slices and focusing relentlessly on it.

5. Optimize continuously

Challenge every assumption by testing the changes with customers and come back to the design table to continuously optimize.

By following this path, banks can begin their own journey towards a customer-centric organization. Discussions will start moving from internal operations towards customers. As multiple owners come together to work on one agenda, appreciation of the customer will improve significantly. Solutions will get co-created, and the result will be an improvement in customer experiences at various touch-points.

A growing number of leading banks across the world are creating teams to obtain deep insights into customer journeys, break silos and bring to the center an obsession about the customer. This has emerged as the sole mantra for success. You must evaluate where you stand.

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About the author

Anindya Karmakar has led multiple initiatives at the cutting edge of digital connectivity, IoT, robotics, analytics, paperless branch and remote advisory. He is passionate about the digital revolution which is underway. He simplifies and de-clutters digital jargons and concepts and presents them in layman's language.

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The views and opinions expressed or implied herein are my own and do not reflect those of my employer, who shall not be liable for any action that may result as a consequence of my views and opinions. The pictures used have been taken from the open internet and I don't claim any credit for them.