Overcome Document Communication Roadblocks To Boost Customer Experience

Transcription

1 A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By GMC October 2015 Overcome Document Communication Roadblocks To Boost Customer Experience

2 Table Of Contents Executive Summary... 3 Financial Service Firms See Customer Experience As Critical To Success In The Age Of The Customer... 4 Many CX Transformations Are Well Under Way... 5 Document Communications Is An Essential, But Often Overlooked, Piece Of The CX Puzzle... 6 Key Recommendations... 8 Appendix A: Methodology... 9 Appendix B: Demographics/Data... 9 ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING Forrester Consulting provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders succeed in their organizations. Ranging in scope from a short strategy session to custom projects, Forrester s Consulting services connect you directly with research analysts who apply expert insight to your specific business challenges. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting. 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. For additional information, go to 1-O1BBVL

3 3 Executive Summary Unlike other industries, the financial services sector s greatest opportunity for revenue growth does not hinge on its ability to simply provide new products or through geographical expansion but rather the ability to deliver highquality and transformative customer experience. Those that get this right will not only capture more customers but will be better placed to keep and enhance their existing relationships. To ensure success means giving attention to all customer touchpoints, whether they are digital or physical. A critical touchpoint that is often overlooked is the document-based communication that customers receive. Customers don t think about separate channels or touchpoints they view the organization holistically. A bad experience at their moment of need in any touchpoint will skew their perception of the entire organization. To keep the document experience from coloring a customer s overall experience, customer experience professionals at financial services organizations need to prove the value of current document communication and gather insights that will help them build documents relevant to the evolving needs of their customers. In August 2015, GMC commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how financial services are improving their customer touchpoints including documents rendered both physically and digitally. In conducting in-depth surveys with 150 IT and customer experience professionals, Forrester found that these companies are striving to achieve better customer experience by improving technology systems, improving customer onboarding, and ensuring the accuracy of customer data. KEY FINDINGS Forrester s study yielded three key findings: Customers are the heart of the business. Customers want to feel valued across all of their interactions and across all stages of their journey. For financial services firms, improving customer experience is critical to their success in the age of the customer. Financial services firms need to respond to customers needs quickly. Customer experience transformation is well on its way. Financial services firms are embarking on customer experience transformation. The custom study revealed that financial services organizations are focusing on improving their customer experience strategy and how it is governed and on developing an organizational culture to exploit the opportunities it presents. Document communication experienced is crucial but often overlooked. The study revealed that many financial organizations believe the document communication experience plays a crucial role as part of their overall customer experience strategy. However, it is often overlook by sexier digital touchpoints. Widely used artifacts like bills and account statements do not get the same customer experience attention they deserve. As a result, document-based communication is often sidelined due to legacy systems and ineffective processes to ensure content produced is accurate and relevant.

4 4 Financial Service Firms See Customer Experience As Critical To Success In The Age Of The Customer Consumers are more empowered now than they ever have been. They expect to get what they want, when they want, on whichever device is most convenient at the time. To succeed in this era of empowered customers, companies need to make some big changes. And they know it. Business decision-makers told us the following about their goals and plans for the next 12 months: FIGURE 1 Improving Customer Experience Is A Top Business Priority How much of a priority are the following business initiatives likely to be for your firm over the next 12 months? Grow revenues Improve the experience that our customers have with us Reduce costs High priority 52% 48% 63% Success hinges on better customer experience, digital preparedness, and differentiation. Higher revenues and lower costs are, of course, the most popular goals. But more than half of the respondents to our survey hope customer experience improvements will deliver both (see Figure 1). Almost as many, 45% are preparing for the disruption that digital technology will continue to bring to every industry. Prepare our business for the impact of digital disruption Improve our level of differentiation in the market Improve our level of corporate environmental sustainability Better comply with regulations and requirements 45% 41% 41% 38% Technology is in the critical path. Forty-five percent of respondents indicated they are currently addressing or are planning to improve technology systems as part of their efforts to better serve customers (see Figure 2). For 42%, that includes adding software and connectivity to existing products and services. Just under 40% of respondents also want to do a better job integrating all of their products into a coherent offering. Customer perceptions are everyone s reality. Fortythree percent of respondents said that they plan to use customer satisfaction metrics to judge success in addition to traditional operational metrics. They know it s the customer s perception, whether it matches objective data or not, that matters. Why? Because it s what drives the customer s decision about who to do business with in the future. FIGURE 2 Financial Services Organizations Are Making Investments To Address Rising Customer Experience Demand What actions is your firm currently taking or planning to address rising customer expectations? Improve technology systems so that we can better serve our customers Use customer satisfaction metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of activities and/or investments Build more software or connectivity into products/services (Wi-Fi, Internet) 45% 43% 42% Improve the ease of use of our product/service Improve our products integration with our other products/services 42% 39%

5 5 Many CX Transformations Are Well Under Way Financial services organizations are making changes to get better at customer experience (see Figure 3). The most common efforts focus on key disciplines of CX management like: CX strategy. Seventy-seven percent of respondents have a clear vision of the type of experience they intend to deliver to customers. That s good. Such a vision is one of the pillars of a well-defined CX strategy and the foundation for the entire CX program. Customer experience governance. Seventy-seven percent of respondents know who is responsible for CX quality in their organizations. Even more, 79%, said that people are starting to weave CX considerations into the firm s decision-making processes. Both are essential to the kind of coordination that it takes to deliver seamless experiences, which 85% of respondents said are either critically important to their overall CX strategy and business goals or very important. Customer-centric culture. To engage employees, firms are sharing their vision of the ideal CX with employees so that they can see how they, personally, help make it happen. Three-quarters say that customer-facing staff has a clear sense of this vision to use as their north star. Just over two-thirds said that even support personnel, people who don t touch customers directly, know it, too. FIGURE 3 The Customer Experience Vision To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements related to your customer experience vision and strategy? Strongly agree or Agree Customer experience requirements and criteria are taken into account by customer-facing business areas when making decisions and setting priorities We know who is responsible/in charge of our customer experience 79% 77% We have clearly defined the experience we intend to create for our customers We have a robust and agreed-upon basis on which we are able to vary the approach to engagement with different customers, and guidelines to help apply it The direction for the customer experience and its requirements are clearly understood by customer-facing business areas Customer experience requirements and criteria are taken into account by noncustomer-facing areas when making decisions and setting priorities The direction for the customer experience and its requirements are clearly understood by noncustomer-facing business areas 77% 76% 75% 72% 67% We have a single person or function in charge of our customer experience 55%

6 6 Document Communications Is An Essential, But Often Overlooked, Piece Of The CX Puzzle Unfortunately, many CX programs only apply best practices to one part of the end-to-end CX. Most home in on digital channels like mobile websites and applications, often with a marketing, rather than a customer experience, mindset (see Figure 4). FIGURE 4 Financial Services Organizations Want To Improve The Experience Across Mobile Websites And Mobile Apps How much of a priority is improving the customer experience across each of the following digital channels? High priority That focus leaves less sexy, but more widely used, artifacts like bills, account statements, quotes, and contracts (see Figure 5) out in the cold. FIGURE 5 Document-Centric Business Processes Are Lower Priority How much of a priority is improving the customer experience across each of the following digital channels? Customer service New customer onboarding Marketing campaigns/lead generation Claims High priority 46% 61% 59% 55% Mobile website 57% Billing/statements 45% Mobile app 53% Policy/contract production 41% Desktop website 53% Presales 40% 47% Quote and proposal development 39% Tablet app 43% Policy/contract negotiation 38% Base: 150 IT and business decision makers at financial services As a result, any CX that s document-based remains: Sidelined by legacy systems. Almost half of respondents said that their technology platforms don t let them integrate documents into multichannel communications. And more than a third said it would take expensive changes to core systems to improve the situation (see Figure 6). Executives don t seem eager to make such investments; 48% of the people in our survey said that their firms have more important priorities than updating older technology platforms.

7 7 FIGURE 6 Documents Are Used Throughout The Customer Life Cycle Please select the top two internal barriers for your firm to deliver greater experiences through document-based communications. Out technology platforms are old; e.g., they do not support multichannel communications We have other priorities such as new mobile applications Required changes to core systems is too expensive We have decentralized communications (in each LOB) and cannot develop a clear strategy Government regulation adherence (our compliance department) keeps us from moving to digital We do not have the right skills 29% 36% 35% 48% 48% Managed in uncoordinated silos. There s a people side to the CX challenge, too. Seventy percent of respondents said that it s hard to maintain accurate content (see Figure 7). That s no surprise our research often shows that product or line of business (LOB) teams don t tell the website, communications, and contact center teams the same things at the same time. Sixty-one percent said that it s hard to craft a consistent look and feel for documents while still adhering to the different regulatory requirements for each business unit. The same number said that it s tough even to incorporate and enforce compliant language across groups without adding the issue of visual consistency into the mix. 3% FIGURE 7 Document Experience Challenges Considering the following list, please rank the following documents-related communications challenges. Ensuring the accuracy of content Incorporating and enforcing compliant language Ensuring consistency with respect to look and feel Responding to customer demands for print and electronic delivery Reducing the time it takes to produce templates Controlling the cost Responding to customer preferences for new digital communications options like video chat or two-way text Controlling access and changes to documents Transferring the management and production of communications from IT to business users Responding to the increasing volume and complexity of our messages 32% 30% 30% 48% 61% 61% 58% 56% 54% 70%

8 8 Key Recommendations Customer experience has quickly become a core foundation for how financial services organizations make their decisions and differentiate from competitors. True customer-centric organizations win, serve, and retain customers by: Reframing products and services based on what they help customers accomplish. Start describing various activities and processes the way that customers would. One company realized that people don t want a mortgage or homeowner s insurance; they want to buy a house. And even more than that, they want security, community, and a place to raise a family. Viewing experiences through this lens ups intensity with which employees can empathize with customers. Mapping the most common customer journeys, no matter how mundane they may seem. Opening and paying a bill may not be a make-or-break moment in the customer life cycle. But it can become a pebble in the customer s shoe if it s confusing or more convoluted than it needs to be. Journey maps help the various groups involved see how processes really look to a customer, a view few have today. Just seeing things from that perspective can unearth opportunities that range from a simple policy change to a rationalization of the content that s used in the various channels that support bill payment. Tracing customer pain points to document-related root causes. An unclear or extra-long document can cause customers to miss important terms and conditions, setting them up for disappointment when they use a product or service later. That surprise pushes them into a heightened emotional state, making them even more upset than they would have been if they d read the contract in detail ahead of time and knew what to expect (even if they didn t like it). Use data from the contact center to see just how often people call in with this confusion, and make the document and service teams jointly responsible for lowering that number. To preclude confusion, use customer-facing employees as document-reviewers before something the document goes out. Understanding all of the ways that technology can help coordinate CX activities. Automated alerts keep the right hand knowing what the left hand is doing. Predefined workflows remind people to check their work against related customer touchpoints or get input from key stakeholders. Facilitate that communication. Capture and integrate customer feedback directly to the journey that it s about. Explaining the positive ripple of good customer experiences. Good CX often comes with better employee experience, which means higher productivity and fewer turnovers. This is true for frontline staff because they hear fewer complaints, but also for back-office people if they understand where they fit in the big picture and have less red tape to cut through. Better CX can also cut costs if you take advantage of efficiency-gaining opportunities that benefit the customer and the company. Piling all of these benefits together over time can change the cost-benefit equation.

9 9 Appendix A: Methodology In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 150 IT decision-makers at financial services organizations in France, Germany, the UK, and the US, all of which had more than 500 employees. The study sought to find out key business priorities for financial services organizations in improving customer experiences, including the role of document-based communication. The study began in July 2015 and was completed in October Appendix B: Demographics/Data FIGURE 8 Survey Demographics: Financial Service Organization By Country And Size France 21% Country United States 33% Employee Size 500 to 999 employees 1,000 to 4,999 employees 22% 32% United Kingdom 23% 5,000 to 19,999 employees 20,000 or more employees 17% 29% Germany 23%