customer experience

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Market Opportunity Drives Strategy

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To be successful – even viable – any business must be seen as valuable by its customers, either by providing advice or solutions, being convenient, or cheap. And to effectively support your company’s value proposition, marketing strategy has to differentiate your company, create competitive advantage, and support profitable growth.

Such strategy doesn’t just write itself. To deliver value you have to understand what is valuable to your customers – what do they need and want? To create competitive advantage, you need to understand how your competition is addressing those same customer needs and do it better – with better product solutions, smarter advice, greater convenience, or a lower price.

2022 Strategic Priorities: Customer Experience

Accelerated digital adoption and use during the pandemic have created an urgency in enhancing digital channel functionality and performance. For most FIs, and particularly community-based ones, there is a danger that digital banking enhancements will be focused on the commoditized aspects of service – such as speed, access, and convenience. And while providing convenient access to customers is a priority, the pandemic has also highlighted the importance to many customers of having access to and engaging with, financial advisors for a wide range of needs. Balancing transactional efficiency with advisory engagement will be a major strategic challenge for community FIs not only in 2022 but for years beyond. The challenge is to deliver on convenience but to differentiate based on personalized service that delivers real financial benefit to each customer’s specific needs … and to do this across all channels and touchpoints. It’s a huge undertaking but one that is necessary to deliver the CX that can set you apart from your competitors. What are some of the key steps to undertake?

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2022 Strategic Priorities: Brand Positioning

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The pandemic has impacted the way we think about our finances and our banking behaviors in a myriad of ways. For many of us, it has made us take stock in our lives our careers, even our financial situations. So, it should come as no surprise that we’re taking stock of our financial institutions, as well.

Considering so much change and consumer reflection, community banks and credit unions need to move toward a higher purpose when it comes to branding as customers, especially those in younger segments, have seen their world’s rocked and will be looking to corporations to step up because of a lack of faith in the performance of governments and other social institutions. Transparency is key, communicating who and what your FI supports.

Channel Strategy: It's More than Just Better Digital

Let’s begin with an understatement: A lot has changed since March 2020. The way we live, work, and carry out our day-to-day activities has changed. Understandably, all industries have seen varying degrees of change.

Customer banking behaviors have changed out of necessity. As financial institutions were required to limit availability of branches, adoption of digital tools soared, and customers became less branch-dependent. Now that branches are increasing their capacity for in-person visits, traffic has yet to return to pre-March levels.

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How COVID-19 Will Drive Customer Experience Changes

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Focusing on the customer experience has always been a priority for community financial institutions. As we navigate this new “normal,” the way that experience is delivered must expand. While digital delivery of banking services has been on the rise, the COVID-19 pandemic just may be the tipping point for the digital banking experience.