Previously, I described the benefits of personalization and outlined the changes a company should make to successfully implement a personalization program. Today, I will outline what companies should be doing right now to prepare.
While many financial institutions are conceptually “on board” and heavily investing in various facets of customer intelligence, the “Netflix” of banking or insurance has yet to emerge. The main reason is that true end-to-end personalization is a challenge that requires developing new capabilities, including robust cross-channel offerings, cross-enterprise collaboration, a single view of the customer, and a new technology ecosystem.
- Start with a strategy
To be successful, you need to develop and implement a strategy that addresses not only technology and tools but also data management, employee skills, and organizational culture.
Creating a complete, accurate picture of any given customer is challenging. Practical personalization is an ongoing effort and continuous refinement. It involves both coordination and integration, along with the all-important human component. The right tools are also crucial for translating data into effective personalization.
- Define what you are offering
Think about how you can build a more direct relationship with your customers. What do you have of value to offer them? How can you use data to enable that value, and will customers find value in the information exchange required? How does this advance your customer relationships and improve how well you serve them?
- Get the message out
This is the time to consider which channels you will focus on to achieve your overall business goals and solve your business problems. Define the key stakeholders using the data, what changes might be required to accommodate how stakeholders interact with each other, and how that data needs to be collected, cleansed, corroborated, and connected.
These considerations will drive the appropriate technology, IT infrastructure, and skill enhancements that will facilitate your strategy.
- Implement a collaboration mindset
A collaborative culture is critical to driving a successful customer intelligence implementation. Look with a critical eye at your organization’s maturity with regard to collaboration. If your internal teams don’t share data with each other, then you have work to do. Improvement needs to be driven from the top. Decision-making executives need to be the driving force behind a company-wide collaborative culture.
Also, consider your organization’s internal skills and whether or not you need a partner to help you on this journey. Qualified data scientists and analysts are in short supply right now, and many organizations don’t have the right mix of internal skills to embark on a customer intelligence journey.
- Take your technology to the next level
Then, of course, you have to set up the necessary technology tools and systems to provide a data-driven overview of all customer interactions. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are critical components of customer intelligence, and appropriate care should be given to choosing the right mix of strategic products and platforms that will enable you to scale and address use cases enterprise-wide. Also, remember to look at your development throughput – make sure you have the capabilities to cope with the influx of development that will come your way.
- Determine best-practices for privacy
And you need to look at your data. Privacy by design should be at the core of any data-enablement strategy, with responsible governance as a foundation. Bring your IT, legal, and privacy teams together to create sustainable policies around data collection, processing, and management. Make sure your data is correct, clean, and formatted so that it can be matched with other attributes and signals.
Resolve to a single identity – an end-to-end system of identity is the key to successful personalization. And remember that your customers change all the time. Think about how you will maintain an accurate, up-to-date identity, taking into account changes in things like address, email, devices, name, or age.
Customer intelligence can appear a daunting task, with lots of moving parts to manage and groups to corral. A strategy and a plan will help sort out priorities and dependencies and ultimately reduces time to value.
Remember, customer intelligence transformation doesn’t have to happen all at once – it just has to happen.
To learn more about the state of personalization in financial services and how you can begin to leverage customer intelligence to champion personalization and win over customers, download our guide here.
