Supplementing Salesforce with Databricks as an enterprise Lakehouse solution brings advantages for various personas across an organization. Customer experience data is highly valued when it comes to driving personalized customer journeys leveraging company-wide applications beyond Salesforce. From enhanced customer satisfaction to tailored engagements and offerings that drive business renewals and expansions, the advantages are hard to miss. Databricks maps data from a variety of enterprise apps, including those used by Sales, Marketing and Finance. Consequently, layering Databricks Generative AI and predictive ML capabilities provide easily accessible best-fit recommendations that help eliminate challenges and highlight success areas within your company’s customer base.

In this blog, I elaborate on the different methods whereby Salesforce data is made accessible from within Databricks. While accessing Databricks data from Salesforce is possible, it is not the topic of this post and will perhaps be tackled in a later blog. I have focused on the built-in capabilities within both Salesforce and Databricks and have therefore excluded 3^rd party data integration platforms. There are three main ways to achieve this integration:

1. Databricks Lakeflow Ingestion from Salesforce
2. Databricks Query Federation from Salesforce Data Cloud
3. Databricks Files Sharing from Salesforce Data Cloud

Choosing the best approach to use depends on your use case. The decision is driven by several factors, such as the expected latency of accessing the latest Salesforce data, the complexity of the data transformations needed, and the volume of Salesforce data of interest. And it may very well be that more than one method is implemented to cater for different requirements.

While the first method copies the raw Salesforce data over to Databricks, methods 2 and 3 offer no-copy alternatives, thus leveraging Salesforce Data Cloud itself as the raw data layer. The no-copy alternatives are great in that they leverage Salesforce’s native capability of managing its own data lake thus eliminating overhead by redoing that effort. However, there are limitations to doing that, depending on the use case. The matrix below presents how each method compares when factoring in the key criteria for integration.

Method	Lakeflow Ingestion	Salesforce Data Cloud Query Federation	Salesforce Data Cloud File Sharing
Type	Data Ingestion	Zero-Copy	Zero-Copy
Supports Salesforce Data Cloud as a Source?	︎ Yes	︎ Yes	︎ Yes
Incremental Data Refreshes	︎ Automated processing into Databricks based on SF standard timestamp fields. Formula fields always require a full refresh of the formulas.	︎ Automated in SF Data Cloud (Requires custom handling if copying to Databricks)	︎ Automated in SF Data Cloud (Requires custom handling if copying to Databricks)
Processing of Soft Deletes	︎ Yes Supported incrementally	︎ Automated in SF Data Cloud (Requires custom handling if copying to Databricks)	︎ Automated in SF Data Cloud (Requires custom handling if copying to Databricks)
Processing of Hard Deletes	✘ Requires a full refresh	︎ Automated in SF Data Cloud (Requires custom handling if copying to Databricks)	︎ Automated in SF Data Cloud (Requires custom handling if copying to Databricks)
Query Response Time	︎ Best as data is queried from a local copy and processed within Databricks	Slower as query response is dependent on SF Data Cloud, and data has to travel across networks	Slower as data travels across networks
Supports Real-Time Querying?	✘ No The pipeline runs on a schedule to copy data for example, hourly, daily, etc.	︎ Yes Live query execution on SF Data Cloud (Data Cloud DLO is refreshed from Salesforce modules either in batches, streaming (every 3 min), or in real-time.)	︎ Yes Live data sourced from SF Data Cloud (Data Cloud DLO is refreshed from Salesforce modules either in batches, streaming (every 3 min), or in real-time.)
Supports Databricks Streaming Pipelines?	︎ Yes, With Declarative Pipelines into Streaming tables (DLT) (runs as micro-batch jobs)	✘ No	✘ No
Suitable for High Data Volume?	︎ Yes SF Bulk API is called for high data volumes such as initial loads, and SF REST API is used for lower data volumes such as limited data volume incremental loads.	✘ No Reliant on JDBC Query Pushdown limitations and SF performance	Moderate This method is more suitable than Query Federation when it comes to zero-copy with high volumes of data.
Supports Data Transformation	No direct transformation. Ingests SF objects as is. Transformation happens downstream in the Declarative Pipeline.	︎ Yes. DBRX pushes queries over to Salesforce using JDBC protocol.	︎ Yes. Transformations execute on Databricks compute
Protocol	SF REST API and Bulk API over HTTPS	JDBC over HTTPS	Salesforce Data Cloud DaaS APIs over HTTPS (file-based access)
Scalability	Up to 250 objects per pipeline. Multiple pipelines are allowed.	Depending on SF Data Cloud performance when running transformation with multiple objects	Up to 250 Data Cloud objects may be included in a data share. Up to 10 data shares.
Salesforce Prerequisites	API-enabled Salesforce user with access to desired objects	Salesforce Data Cloud must be available. Data Cloud DMOs mapped to DLOs with Streams or other methods for Data Lake population. Enable JDBC API access to Data Cloud.	Salesforce Data Cloud must be available. Data Cloud DMOs mapped to DLOs with Streams or other methods for Data Lake population. Data share target is created in SF with shared objects.

If you’re looking for guidance on leveraging Databricks with Salesforce, reach out to Perficient for a discussion with Salesforce and Databricks specialists.

In this episode of What If? So What?, Jim talks with Jennifer Baker, former CTO of Synovus. She shares her journey from unexpected career opportunities to becoming a trailblazing technology leader in the insurance and banking sectors, culminating in significant strides in product development, customer experience, and digital transformation.

Beyond her professional accolades, Jennifer passionately advocates for education and empowerment of women and children through her nonprofit work. Her story is a masterclass in continuous learning, adaptability, and the crafting of a career full of diverse experiences, which she likens to assembling “puzzle pieces.”

Step into the realm of fostering inclusive workplaces, especially in tech, where women are alarmingly underrepresented. Hear Jennifer’s insights on the critical need for mentorship and sponsorship to support women in technology, especially in a post-pandemic world.

As a self-described “accidental CTO,” Jennifer shares her journey embracing unforeseen opportunities and adapting in a rapidly changing digital world. Her experiences offer inspiration and practical lessons for aspiring tech leaders, underscoring the importance of intentional inclusion to spark innovation and ensure diverse representation.

Listen now on your favorite podcast platform or visit our website.

Subscribe Where You Listen

Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Overcast

Meet our Guest

Jennifer Baker, Strategic Technology & Business Transformation Leader

Jennifer has more than 20 years of experience and a proven track record of driving transformative change in diverse industries, including fintech, retail, banking, insurance, technology, and consumer products. A former chief technology officer, her expertise lies in spearheading comprehensive initiatives that enhance scalability, reduce technical debt, and streamline operations, resulting in substantial cost savings and revenue growth.

Jennifer is passionate about empowering women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and actively serves on the board of directors for both DataScan, a fintech company in the automotive sector, and Women in Technology in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Connect with Jennifer

Meet the Host

Jim Hertzfeld is Area Vice President, Strategy for Perficient.

For over two decades, he has worked with clients to convert market insights into real-world digital products and customer experiences that actually grow their business. More than just a strategist, Jim is a pragmatic rebel known for challenging the conventional and turning grand visions into actionable steps. His candid demeanor, sprinkled with a dose of cynical optimism, shapes a narrative that challenges and inspires listeners.

Connect with Jim:

LinkedIn | Perficient

In the latest episode of the “What If? So What?” podcast, Ron Gaines, senior manager of marketing technology and analytics at Sunbelt Rentals, joins us to discuss the company’s approach to driving customer success. Ron shares how Sunbelt Rentals is committed to ensuring that every interaction delivers real value to the customer.

Ron highlights the importance of aligning sales and marketing efforts to provide a seamless and consistent customer experience. By leveraging data and analytics, Sunbelt Rentals can adapt quickly to meet its customers’ evolving needs. Ron delves into how the company listens to customer feedback and uses it to enhance its services, ensuring it remains a leader in the industry.

Tune in to hear more about how Sunbelt Rentals is setting new standards in customer success and the innovative strategies it is using to stay ahead in a competitive market.

Listen now on your favorite podcast platform or visit our website.

Subscribe Where You Listen

Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Overcast

Meet our Guest

Ronald Gaines, Senior Manager of Marketing Technology and Analytics, Sunbelt Rentals

Ronald Gaines is the senior manager of marketing technology and analytics at Sunbelt Rentals, where he strategically and tactically guides people, processes, and technology to enhance the customer experience and drive business performance through cutting-edge digital capabilities.

A recognized expert and thought leader in digital transformation, customer experience, digital marketing, and marketing automation, Ronald excels in translating data into actionable insights that elevate customer experiences and business outcomes.

Ronald is the go-to authority for organizations seeking to unlock their full potential through exceptional customer engagement. His passion for people extends beyond his professional role—he is a dedicated mentor, committed to giving back and sharing his wealth of knowledge and practical expertise.

Connect with Ron

Meet the Host

Jim Hertzfeld is Area Vice President, Strategy for Perficient.

For over two decades, he has worked with clients to convert market insights into real-world digital products and customer experiences that actually grow their business. More than just a strategist, Jim is a pragmatic rebel known for challenging the conventional and turning grand visions into actionable steps. His candid demeanor, sprinkled with a dose of cynical optimism, shapes a narrative that challenges and inspires listeners.

Connect with Jim:

LinkedIn | Perficient

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital, Keith Wolf is not only a Director in our Digital Strategy practice but also a strategic veteran. Prior to joining Perficient, Keith founded and operated a digital innovation firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He leveraged his creative background and served as the company’s Chief Creative Officer for more than two decades. During this time, Keith was instrumental in helping Fortune 100 companies ignite innovation through digital exploration and experience design. His motto at the time was “We can’t do everything, but we can do anything.” 

In recent years, as most companies are reaching digital maturity, Keith was driven to apply his expertise on a global scale with end-to-end capabilities. Naturally, Keith’s curiosity drew him to Perficient, a global consultancy that delivered technology and experience, both of which are equally important in the world of Digital. 

Mirroring his career journey, Keith stated that, “Strategy must constantly evolve.” With nearly three years at Perficient, Keith inherently leverages his industry knowledge to unveil and deliver unparalleled strategic value to clients. Continue reading to learn more about Keith, his design expertise, and what he does to create impactful digital experiences. 

Describe your current role. What does a day in the life look like?  

In my day-to-day as a digital strategist, I work across our portfolio to bring strategic digital perspectives and insights into experience opportunities. I work closely with the Managing Director of Experience Design (XD), Erin Rushman, to support the growth of the customer experience (CX) strategy across Perficient.  

How do you successfully approach collaboration with cross-functional teams and stakeholders? 

I think of collaboration as 80% listening and 20% doing. Some people think it’s about their voice being heard, but I think it’s about listening, considering multiple angles of diverse thinking, and using these perspectives to develop better solutions. When we deliver solutions across multiple business units, the solution is more well-rounded. It has our best experts looking at it from different angles, and that solution is naturally more immersed in our expertise. 

What does it mean to you that Perficient was named a Major Player in the IDC MarketScapes: Worldwide Experience Design Services and Worldwide Experience Build Services 2023-2024 Vendor Assessments?  

We have some of the smartest people in consulting at Perficient, and it’s important we’re able to share the breadth and depth of our brand on a broader scale. I think our position as a Major Player in these Worldwide IDC MarketScapes is instrumental in ensuring our story is told comprehensively, and I believe it demonstrates our ability to excel among end-to-end consultancies across the world. Beyond this, I think our position as a Major Player underscores Perficient’s extensive global reach and emphasizes our commitment to digital experience as a crucial factor in differentiating our clients’ strategies. 

How do you feel our Global Innovation and Industry Centers are beneficial to our clients?  

I think our customers expect global reach, meaning global in the translation of concepts, but also the ability to reach multiple geographies for delivery. These Industry and Innovation Centers enable us to do business in multiple geographies and provide a space for customers to meet Perficient team members in person, solve problems, and create solutions efficiently, all with global reach and depth.  

Can you explain why a consumer-driven mindset is pivotal when it comes to design?  

Perficient prioritizes a consumer-driven methodology, which allows us to see problems through the lens of the customer to better meet their individual needs. These investments grow our clients’ businesses by better meeting the needs of their customers. Many organizations think about design through the lens of their business, solving solutions they think their customers will use, but when they get to market, they find that their customers aren’t satisfied or engaged.  

What makes you so passionate about design, and what led you to pursue a career in Experience Design?  

I like to say, “Design isn’t an outcome, design is a process.” When you think about design as a process, there’s value in that process, whether we’re solving a problem that may exist, closing a gap that a customer has in their experience, or identifying new ways a brand can deliver value. This comes through understanding where an opportunity is and creatively problem-solving, which is what gets me excited about design.  

Where do you see the future of experience design heading, and are there emerging technologies or concepts that you think will shape the future of the field?  

I’m a true believer that most organizations have heavily invested in IT infrastructure, and I believe their next investment will be in CX. When I say that, I mean the design of the customer experience and the process of a consumer-driven design. I believe XD’s future lies in its evolution through robust processes, offering numerous advantages along the way.  

One notable advantage, for example, is the utilization of Generative AI, which enables the creation of highly personalized solutions. Various technologies are aiding us in refining concepts and ideas, whether it’s within our Industry and Innovation Centers or through the exploration of new and emerging technologies. I think the future of CX is bright, and Perficient is ready. 

How do you adapt your design strategies to keep up with the evolving landscape of technology and user expectations?  

This is something I feel a lot of customers struggle with. I think it ultimately boils down to the organizational mindset and prioritizing the delivery of experiences through an iterative approach. If customers aren’t thinking about their experiences in this agile and iterative way, they’ll quickly fall behind. 

How have you personally helped advance Perficient’s business during your career here?  

To continue Perficient’s growth trajectory, I believe we have to build our future on the foundation of our past. I work to inject creativity and portray the value of our ideas into every pursuit and delivery I touch. We must create new foundations in our product to add creative value to our foundations of technology and implementation. This is something especially important as it relates to CX and ensuring we create engaging experiences that connect with customers.   

What advice would you offer to someone starting a career at Perficient?  

Network. Network. Network. Make a conscious effort to get to know those around you, but also those who may be more distant. Having a broad understanding of how Perficient is consistently delivering value to our customers will help you shape your role individually. We’re all a part of something bigger than ourselves at Perficient. We have so many smart and interesting people that if you’re not reaching out, you aren’t growing. 

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT  

It’s no secret our success is because of our people. No matter the technology or time zone, our colleagues are committed to delivering innovative, end-to-end digital solutions for the world’s biggest brands, and we bring a collaborative spirit to every interaction. We’re always seeking the best and brightest to work with us. Join our team and experience a culture that challenges, champions, and celebrates our people.  

Visit our Careers page to see career opportunities and more!  

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. 

The Landscape

According to Forbes Advisor: 2022 Digital Banking Survey, as of 2022, 78% of adults in the U.S. prefer to bank via a mobile app or website.

That’s a whole lot of consumers, all of whom come with unique expectations, needs, and data. And those consumers desire digital experiences that are personalized and meaningful.  In fact, Gartner shares that brands risk losing 38 percent of customers from poor personalization efforts.

Tectonic Shifts Demand Value-Adding, Strategic Steps

This shift in digital banking preferences confronts institutions with technology and business challenges that are more convoluted than ever, and a plethora of platform and technology advances have risen in response to consumers’ expectations for more personalized, meaningful experiences with their banking institutions. However, it’s not always obvious which of the many potential technology vendors and implementation partners will best drive an organization’s desired business goals. Not to mention, institutions face new, more sophisticated threats every day that defy the ways in which they’ve traditionally conducted business (i.e.., blockchain​, digital wallets​, money center banks​, emerging payment solutions, digital lending​, economic turmoil​, and fintech disintermediation).

Choosing the Right Strategic Partner

Banks seek partners who understand the headwinds, will empower them to navigate these challenges with confidence and enable them to create tailored experiences that engage customers in new ways. They want to have meaningful relationships with technology partners who will bring innovative ideas and proven experience to the table.

As financial services leaders research personalization technology partners, we recommend the following value-add checklist. The right partner will help you to:

• Get ahead of your competition
• Balance incumbency and innovation​
• Expand your franchise to grow and increase profitability​
• Create unique combinations of products and functionality that solve customer problems​
• Scale new product propositions quickly and efficiently​
• Avoid over-investing in capabilities that do not drive strategic value
• Improve organizational flexibility and modular approaches to service design and product development​
• Remain in compliance

Propelling Success With Omnichannel Marketing

All these efforts, to be successful, must coincide with omnichannel marketing. Marketers often turn to technology vendors to help them define robust and compliant digital marketing strategies. The right technologies can give marketers the reliable and digestible data needed to enable them to make strategic decisions and deliver streamlined, personalized communications across channels in the locations where consumers are engaging most.

Bankers that have a defined digital marketing strategy are seeing greater lead generation and client acquisition. However, according to research, sixty-five percent of advisors who generate leads through a website still find it ineffective at meeting growth targets. This indicates an opportunity for further optimization of video, digital advertising, webinars, search engine marketing, social media, and more, which reinforces the importance of having the right technology in place to drive these initiatives effectively.

How Perficient Can Help

Perficient enables banks to deliver end-to-end personalized, omnichannel marketing initiatives and products. We partner with leading technology vendors, such as Salesforce and Adobe, to match our clients with the right platforms for their unique needs.

Interested in learning more? Explore our expertise in financial services, and contact us today.

Perficient’s Director of Commerce Strategy Justin Racine was recently named one of CMSWire’s Contributors of the Year.

CMSWire is one of the leading communities of CX professionals, whose goal is to advance its members via high-impact knowledge. The Contributor of the Year recognition is awarded to authors whose articles greatly resonated with the CMSWire community of professionals this year.

Justin brings a unique perspective to his columns covering ecommerce, customer-focused experiences, and branding strategy. He covered a multitude of topics throughout the year, all of which can still guide companies as we head into 2023:

• The Communal Side of Customer Experience – A purchase is only part of the equation for a transaction – the other side is enabling your customers to connect with each other and share their love for your brand.
• Guess Who’s Back, Back Again – QR’s Back, Tell a Friend – QR codes have been resurrected from the dead and are a fantastic way to enable customers to shop or digest information right from their mobile device.
• The Customer Experience Secret Amazon Doesn’t Want You to Know About – Inventory transparency is the “secret sauce” to driving exceptional customer experience in digitally-enabled commerce environments in 2023.
• Be a ‘Method Customer’ to Improve Customer Experience – Step into your customers shoes and live through the experiences your brand has. It will help more than you think in redefining how customers want to interact.
• Be Like Chris, Empower Social Employee Personality Engagement – Don’t be afraid to enable your employees to go above and beyond through social media – it just might gain national news coverage.
• Cheap Beer and Recessions: How to Survive and Thrive with Exceptional Customer Experience – Price isn’t always the most important factor to customers – focus on enabling experiences and nostalgic feelings through your brand to help lift you through an imminent recession in 2023.
• Retail Is – and Always Will Be – Integral to Digital Customer Experience – Digitally-led experiences are more important than you think in driving in-store foot traffic. Leverage digital and in-store as a tag team duo that can’t be beat in 2023.
• Are You Ghosting Your Customers? – Don’t leave your customers on read – focus on social and customer service channels to make sure all customer concerns are heard and dealt with.
• Influencer Marketing Lessons Learned from Kanye West Fallout – Think twice before enabling a celebrity to endorse your brand – but if you do, make sure to do your homework on their past before you give them your product to promote.

Read more from Justin Racine on Perficient’s blog, and contact us to work with Justin and our team on your commerce strategy. Our experts have helped some of the world’s biggest brands across industries create experiences that delight and deliver results.

With the rise of AI and our ability to collect increasingly more data about consumers, it’s important that we keep human-centered design at the forefront to improve engagement with consumers. But how? Many enterprise-level companies, even those with mature digital marketing strategies, are challenged with putting their data into action.

In order to bridge the gap, you need to rethink how your data and data science models are being structured and consider your data analytics capabilities. By applying human-centered design, you should be able to use your data to output a deliverable that will allow machine learning to predict consumer behavior. Such predictions would include real-time behavioral shifts that machine learning should pick up on when someone has shifted from one journey to another.

Go beyond customer research

Human-centered design is really about designing user experiences that meet the specific needs of your customer. With the right information, you can guide your UX and CX to a more engaging design.  Personalization is also a part of the experience that can be applied throughout their customer journey if you are collecting and using data effectively.

To provide rewarding customer design, it’s time to dig a little deeper into how you are approaching data segmentation beyond customer research and persona building. For example, perhaps your product consumer is someone who is a DIY person who is a bit more price conscious, versus another person who is more interested in a premium, top-of-the-line product. That kind of preference data goes beyond the macro approach of doing the journey research and using that to guide your UX design.

Human behavior is not standardized

In the example, if you stick to designing for the persona only, you’ll miss out on providing a great experience for the person shopping based on preference. On the other hand, if you design only based on preference, your customer experience won’t target those who fit into your persona buckets.

We all also know that just because someone is price conscious, there may be circumstances that cause them to shift their behavior. So, all of a sudden, the person in our example is taking a different path than someone who is just purely looking for the best deal. This is where you have to evolve your design to be more data-driven in order to be human-centered. You have to be able to adjust for a mindset shift and align your data collection and taxonomy strategy to account for real-time audience learning opportunities. Setting up alerts when data suggests a change of experience preference of increased likelihood to convert, to help inform personalized UX strategy during key journey touchpoints.

By aligning your data structure, segmentation and advanced analytics models to key journey touchpoints, not only can you apply your audience learnings to human-centered UX design, you also build up foundational data to enable machine learning capabilities delivering next best actions unique by persona, journey touchpoints, and audience motivation.

Perficient helps companies with project like this every day. Contact us to learn more.

Our very own Kim Williams- Czopek (General Manager, Commerce) sat down with Gary Schoch, (VP of Global GTM Software Leader Consumer Experience Portfolio at HCL Software) and other panelists at the HCL Commerce Global Summit 2022 to discuss customer experience, data, and omnichannel. You can watch the full conversation here.

Changes in Consumer Behavior and Its Effects on Omnichannel

Building a strong omnichannel strategy is a goal for all e-commerce businesses. The ability to provide the same inventory selections, pricing, and promotions across all channels (in-store, online, and mobile) is a good indication of an omnichannel strategy that works. However, consumer behavior and expectations, as they always do, are changing.

The biggest change that Kim Williams- Czopek has noticed in the past few years is that customers expect control. Czopek says that it is no longer a question of “can I?” But instead, a question of “why can’t I? And if I, can’t I’m gone.” This customer expectation expands to everything from where the customer shops, where they return, to where and when they get their stuff. Customers are not as patient as they once were, so that is why it is important to give all your customers a frictionless, consistent experience across all channels.

Do Not Be Afraid to Talk to Your Customers to Get Feedback

A lot of companies struggle to get direct customer input. The perception around research is that research is costly and time-consuming. There are a lot of tools available that can automate some of the feedback asynchronously. However, “nothing beats getting out in the field and talking to customers,” says Czopek. This could be in the form of a survey or a remote interview session, but this is where Czopek recommends starting. She states “it is important to first understand what your customers want, and how your operations are supporting that. Then you can figure out what to do with your technology and data to meet those needs.”

Helping Our Clients Get to Personalization at Scale

A lot of use cases that Perficient is currently focusing on are the ones that leverage data to deliver personalization and how to surface relevant and meaningful offers, communications, and self-service. We have a lot of clients making great headway in those areas.  Learn more about how we will use journey science to help you give your customers the personalization that they have come to expect.

When Does Data Really Hold Value?

Czopek emphasizes that “it is not about the technology, it never is, it is about the people and process.” Having all of the data and technology is great, but if you are missing the people who can answer to the business and explain the insights within, then your data is useless. Czopek explains this through a back and forth she witnessed between a CEO and the head of analytics:

CEO: “Why did we beat our comp yesterday?”

Head of Analytics: “Well I sent you the dashboard”

CEO: “Yeah but why did we beat our comp?”

Head of analytics: “Look at the dashboard.”

As you can see through this example, data is useless unless someone on your team can clearly communicate what the data is saying.

Less Rigidity Will Improve your Agility

A lot of companies struggle with building agility in their teams. We all learned just how important agility is from the Covid-19 pandemic. At the drop of a hat, everything can change, and you must adapt.

To build better agility in your teams it must come from the top down. Investing in training is also important, it might not be a scrum methodology specifically, but expand the notion of what agile means.

Importantly do what is best for the customer and start building processes and training programs around that. Less rigidity will help improve your agility because most people want to do the right thing and are smart, so if you give them the right tools and guidance, they will do it.

The Future of First-Party Data

Czopek “would love if first-party data was the end-all-be-all but right now it is not.” Right now, there just simply not enough interactions to validate all of the first-party data. With that being said, helping our clients move to first-party data is one of our top three outcome-driven objectives that we are working with. So, the question at hand here is how much data you need for your first-party data to be valid?

Learn More

 Reach out to one of our many experts to learn more about CX, Omnichannel, and data! Like what you heard from Kim Williams Czopek? Well, you can hear more from her on Perficient’s What If? So What? Podcast, where Kim Williams- Czopek and co-host Jim Hertzfeld discover what’s possible with digital and figure out how to make it real in your business.

The financial services industry has made major strides in amping up its overall customer experience game; however, there is still a deficit in the personalization and accessibility of products and services for many Americans. The financial services industry must consider its customer experience game while also grappling with a sense of distrust from many communities due to systematic barriers, maintaining utmost accessibility due to the essentiality of the business, and the lack of financial literacy across the country.

With these circumstances of the financial services industry in mind, I’ve outlined three ways financial institutions can work toward more inclusive servicing and step up for underserved communities.

1. Trust and Transparency 

A sense of trust toward an institution, like a sense of trust toward a person, is earned. It is imperative for financial institutions to train their employees comprehensively and supply them with the necessary tools to advise and support clients ethically and transparently.

For instance, institutions can help employees foster a sense of trust by being forthright with the terms and agreements of contracts; clients should not have to “read the fine print” marked with astricts and written in tiny font at the bottom of a page to know exactly what they are agreeing to and signing up for, and they should be told what data is being collected from them and how it will be used. Institutions must also prioritize regulatory compliance and be vigilant about carrying out consequences when their employees breach these expectations.

Building trust is not limited to overarching company leadership. Trust is built by every employee at every level truly practicing an empathetic approach that allows for consideration of each client’s unique circumstances and experiences as an individual. It is established through offering personalization without judgment. John Doe may come to a financial institution seeking guidance on how to live off his social security money, while Jane Doe may need assistance on how to best invest the substantial amount of money she recently inherited – each customer should be treated with the same amount of care and thought.

2. Accessibility 

There are many lenses through which to consider promoting accessibility, such as location and physical accessibility, financial accessibility, data accessibility, and language accessibility.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought an onset of physical branch closures in all communities, and many communities – especially predominantly African American, Latino, and working-class and rural white communities – already lacked access to physical bank locations. Financial institutions can help combat these “bank branch deserts” by investing in more customizable mobile banking platforms that include easy-to-reach customer support representatives and AI-powered chatbots that are sophisticated and multilingual.

Greenwood, a digital mobile banking platform made for Black and Latino customers, is one example of a financial institution working to increase accessibility among underserved communities. Mike Randall, a co-founder of Greenwood, wanted to address the specific issue of bank branches being replaced by check cashing places that charge absurdly high-interest rates. Greenwood operates completely online, but they partner with FDIC-insured banks and are part of a global ATM network that allows members to use more than 100,000 ATMs fee-free when they need to withdraw and deposit physical cash and checks.

To offer another example of a bank consciously aimed at supporting the underserved, Forbes just recognized Quontic as the number one “best overall online bank.” Quontic calls itself an “adoptive digital bank” and is a certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), meaning it directs at least 60% of its financing to economically distressed communities. It is an entirely online bank but has customer service representatives who members can call and email when they need or want to talk to a human. Like Greenwood, it is part of an ATM network that allows members to use more than 90,000 ATMs fee-free when they need to withdraw and deposit physical cash and checks.

Although there is still indisputable value in physical branches, these uber-successful online-only models show the essentiality for banks, even with physical locations, to prioritize their digital platforms.

3. Education and Advocacy

There are many ways in which institutions can work to execute widespread education and advocacy, such as through data and research, and community involvement.

Investing in more widespread research can help gain insight into traditionally underserved and overlooked communities. For example, traditional financing is very much based on FICO scores, but not all people are a scorable population; thus, their data is typically not considered when businesses perform customer research. Financial institutions can support research internally or by partnering with research firms, using research findings to better advocate for their customers.

Regarding education and advocacy via community involvement, financial institutions can support financial literacy by backing legislation that promotes financial education (only 14 states currently require students to take a personal finance class to graduate high school), by hosting community events like personal finance workshops and seminars, and by driving marketing initiatives that include informative content creation for the general public. Promoting financial wellness and literacy helps everyone; communities with financially sound citizens circulate more money, which helps financial institutions’ profits.

Community involvement extends to charitable donations, as well. For example, Citizens Bank gave over $2 million in grants to small businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic to help keep local communities afloat. Wells Fargo collaborates with its Wells Fargo Foundation, which has a grant program that offers grants to businesses and nonprofits working to support financial health, housing affordability, small business growth, and sustainability and environmental justice.

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Interested in discussing how you can improve your financial institution’s customer experience? Contact our financial services industry experts today.

I joined Perficient, an end-to-end global consultancy, last December. Let me explain why. The Strategy & Consulting team I joined is full of incredibly talented professionals. Some have been with the company for over a decade, while others have recently joined. Many of these folks came from the industry/client side of the business, which brings unique perspectives that are difficult to come across. I was also impressed by all the work we’ve done in automotive and our company’s desire to make an even more significant impact in the industry.

And, so, here I stand, alongside my passionate colleagues. At the end of the day, our goal is to bring our deep industry experience and broad portfolio of technology and digital solutions to more of you, the automakers.

An Evolving Industry

Change and innovation in automotive are happening rapidly, creating many opportunities.

We believe that the key to a thriving automotive strategy is the ability to assess, optimize, innovate, execute, and scale efforts. That means reengineering automotive platforms to embrace new technologies, launching large-scale digital transformation projects, and expanding into self-driving cars, mobility services, or driving other new businesses.

The entire industry is challenged with a chip shortage and supply chain issues, which have significantly reduced the number of vehicles in production. That’s one of the reasons the shift to special ordering has become more prevalent. The leap toward ecommerce also creates new demand for improved customer experiences, such as simplifying the website shopping or purchasing process.

Mobility and electrification are also deep focus areas for automakers. Many position themselves as mobility companies and strive to understand what that means to consumers. Understanding the consumer journey and how to serve them in our mobile and technologically driven world is critical. In-vehicle data (i.e., telematics) gives OEMs the ability to understand more about the consumer and shopping journey than ever before, which will drive new customer experiences.

There are massive infrastructure changes underway for charging and the need for increased consumer education around electrification. There has been a major increase in electrified-only vehicle companies that have launched all around the globe, not to mention all the other charging, battery, and other EV-related companies.

Driving innovation and growth encapsulates the trends and priorities in automotive. Our experience makes us an excellent choice for a strategic digital transformation partner. We welcome your interest in learning how we can help support your never-ending journey to putting the customer first.

Coming Up

If you like solving complex industry challenges and coming up with best-in-class solutions, keep reading our blog. Also, we welcome topic suggestions, debate, and dialogue. So, think of this as an ongoing conversation in perhaps one of the most exciting and significant times in the automotive industry. A time of immense change and opportunity.

My next blog will highlight our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Center of Excellence offering, which helps automakers establish, guide, and support SEO best practices. As they face supply-side and chip challenges, the need for organic website traffic and leads is more important than ever.

I look forward to our journey together.

While it was once expected and acceptable for lenders to enforce standardized payment due dates and policies, COVID-19 brought the impracticality and ineffectiveness of a “one-size-fits-all” approach to credit and lending to light.

Two-plus years later, banks and credit unions continue to feel the pressure to transform their credit and lending operations. And for good. Fortunately, at Perficient, we quickly realized the dire economic situation and the challenges financial institutions and their customers faced. We knew that we could help optimize the debt collections process, reduce loan loss rates, and increase customer loyalty by leveraging a highly personalized and humanized approach to lending that combines process reengineering and technology throughout the customer journey.

A Pathway to Improved Loss Rates and Happier Customers

IDC recently included Perficient in the “Loan Collections-Recovery” category of its “Market Glance: Worldwide Consumer & Small Businesses Lending Digital Transformation Strategies, Q2 2022 (Doc # US49009422, April 2022).” The IDC Market Glance offers an overview of the landscape for consumer and small business digital lending. Featured categories list companies that provide technology lending solutions and related services to financial institutions and other tech buyers.

Perficient developed a tried-and-true blueprint for collections optimization, which focuses on customer journey science and segmentation, key performance metrics, contact sequencing strategies, and supporting technologies. We help clients address outdated collections practices, accelerate the adoption of new technologies supporting collections, adhere to new laws and regulations regarding debt collection communications, identify opportunities for savings, and make debt collection processes more human and conversational.

As an example, for one client, we implemented a “treat-people-right-and-they’ll-pay-you-back” plan that meets today’s heightened customer expectations. The program quickly increased debt collection agent productivity by 46% and reduced monthly delinquencies by $3.4 million.

IDC’s Take on Lending Digital Transformation Strategies

In the report, Market Glance: Worldwide Consumer & Small Businesses Lending Digital Transformation Strategies, Q2 2022, IDC states, “Many financial institutions (FIs) have lagged their fintech competitors in the digitization of key banking business lines such as lending.” Developing sophisticated routes of communication (i.e., cross-platform communication capabilities) for credit and lending equips banks with the tools they need to empower their customers with a greater sense of control over their financial wellness.

The report notes “Digital lending platforms align extremely well with IDC’s 3^rd Platform model of core technologies including cloud, big data/analytics, AI/machine learning, and mobility, that enable FIs to manage relationships and conduct business transactions more successfully.” This is partly due to these technologies’ ability to significantly reduce the potential for friction. Enhanced customer-lender communication is one example of how technology can help companies can make the collections process more human and conversational.

Coinciding with reducing friction in customer-lender communications is the potential for greater customer choice. Due to these technologies, customers can choose to have lenders contact them via text message rather than a phone call, for instance. The technology makes aligning to customer preferences much more possible.

To learn more about how Perficient can help optimize your credit and lending functions, visit https://www2.perficient.com/digital-collections or contact Scott Albahary, Financial Services, Chief Strategist.

Improving customer experience is a top priority for most organizations looking to grow revenue. To deliver on this imperative requires identifying customer problems, developing a plan to profitably solve those problems, and building the necessary CX infrastructure.

Most CX leaders shouldn’t approach this task alone, and there are experienced partners ready to support them. That’s why Forrester published the Now Tech: Customer Experience Strategy Consulting Practices, Q1 2022 report. This listing of CX strategy providers includes Perficient and 32 other vendors, and it helps CX leaders understand the value they can expect from a CX strategy consulting practice and to select one based on size and capability.

How CX Strategy Consulting Providers Can Help

In the Now Tech report, Forrester defines a CX strategy consulting practice as, “A consultancy that supports a company’s CX transformation initiative with expertise in the areas of strategy, experience design, business processes, and/or technology infrastructure.”

“CX strategy consulting practices can be found in a variety of services firms. And though these firms have different backgrounds and core strengths, they all generally help CX leaders:

• “Diagnose customer problems that are lucrative to solve…
• Develop a plan to solve those customer problems profitably…
• Build the infrastructure needed to execute the CX transformation.”

Perficient’s Inclusion as a CX Strategy Consulting Provider

Perficient was included in the report as a midsize provider, which we believe is testament to our expertise leveraging digital capabilities to build seamless, personalized, and satisfying customer journeys.

Our strategists employ a strategic formulation approach, Perficient’s Envision Framework, to help clients get to the future fast, using three cumulative phases: Insights, Ideas, and Investment. It’s how we help clients rapidly identify opportunities, define a customer-focused vision, and develop a prioritized roadmap to transform their business.

Do you know how ready your company is to create, deliver, and sustain exemplary customer experiences? Learn more about Perficient’s five-week CX IQ jumpstart that will help you highlight priorities, create strategic alignment, and guide decisions about where and how to improve CX.