According to the McKinsey Quarterly, consumer-facing financial services, such as retail-banking, social technologies can help improve service delivery, reduce costs, and enhance the customer experience.
“Consumers are increasingly open to using these channels for easier, more transparent interactions with their financial institutions. New processes are surfacing across a sector often typified by organizational complexity, siloed personnel, and fragmented processes that stymie collaboration, innovation, and efficiency.”
An example cited in the article was Movenbank, now known simply as Moven. It initially targeted 50,000 customers through a Facebook-based institution that will be branchless, as well as paper and plastic free. Clients will use the bank’s Web site and their own mobile devices for transactions, and an proprietary system will advise on financial matters and analyze customer information for credit decisions. Although not the first in this field, they are changing the way they target their market. Other more well known services, such as Mint.com, started first as personal money managers, before being OEM’d by other banks as a value added services. Moven is essentially starting out as a bolt-on to a traditional bank.
Jim Marous, of New Control, wrote about Moven on the blog NextBank: “First of all, Moven is not a bank. Similar to Simple, while not having a banking charter, Moven provides a unique customer experience interface with a traditional banking organization working in the background (with banking licenses, FDIC insurance, etc.). The focus of Moven from the beginning of development has been to ‘help customers spend, save and live smarter’ using mobile technology.”
I believe this is a great example of how the customer experience of a traditional business, not only bricks-and-mortar banks, can be enhanced into a socially-aware and customer centric mobile model. Insurance and health-care, could be more social, people could find policies and plans based on what people with similar circumstances have done, or based on the out come of a claims procedure. Perhaps making administration easier, and reducing the claims process.
