AI-Driven Optimizations That Deliver
Financial institutions have been actively engaged in digital transformation, which includes rethinking their digital customer experience. The challenges faced in 2020 have made it mandatory to accelerate the pace of innovation and prioritize enhancing the entire digital journey.
The goal is to better serve customers by making the online banking experience more engaging, faster, and easier. This effort becomes more challenging since consumer expectations have been shifting, competitors are responding faster, and external events continue to affect the industry. For most financial institutions this means an ambitious plan and lots of new key performance indicators (KPIs) that have to be met.
Evolv AI helps clients optimize the digital experience to achieve their KPIs. This includes driving the completion of credit card sign ups or loan selection by mapping the customer journey and serving up progressively better customer experiences.
Evolv AI’s machine learning-driven solution for Digital Growth Optimization can optimize online and mobile shopping experiences and much more.
Provide Contextual Guidance And Recommendations
One of the most impactful parts of an optimization plan is to provide contextual guidance and financial recommendations based on real-time needs and opportunities. This means having the mechanisms to be able to test for various personalized elements to any journey. The key to realizing a superior customer experience requires awareness of many factors, such as what device the customer is using, what they are currently doing, and identifying if this is an opportunity to steer their next steps. This means personalization.
A major challenge with personalization is gaining insights and identifying behavioral clusters at a local level. Many financial institutions consist of a network of regional and local branches. Depending on the size of the market, there may not be enough customer traffic to gather enough data, especially at a local branch level. This is where aggregating insights across multiple locations can be beneficial to drive micro segmentations.
Financial institutions can move away from delivering a generic experience and incorporate localization at a regional, city, and even neighborhood level. An example is serving specific demographics a different journey based on insights that show that certain groups of customers prefer specific types of services. Such an approach includes delivering a digital experience that focuses on specific services and also delivers a localized experience including support for multiple languages. Providing a personalized experience which guides customers towards what they are likely to want will result in more sign ups and conversions.
Leverage ATMs, ITMs, And Kiosks
Anything with a screen has the potential to serve customers, but it has the potential to damage the experience if it is not consistent with the other channels. Automated teller machines (ATMs) are everywhere and offer an opportunity to impact the customer experience right on the screen. As ATMs become more sophisticated, financial institutions need to consider what part of the journey the ATM can impact beyond withdrawals and deposits.
Many financial institutions are now starting to use interactive teller machines (ITMs) with live humans available to provide additional assistance. These devices are capable of so much more and need to aim to reduce the need for a customer to connect with a live agent. This is the heart of optimization, to continually understand the journey. The focus must be on identifying points of friction and addressing them. The potential to suggest additional services and alternatives, while a customer is using an ITM, is limitless provided the time spent at that device is highly efficient and avoids the need to speak to a live person.
Beyond ATMs and ITMs, kiosks have also become more popular and take on many forms including smart tablets such as an iPad. The journey here is usually much more involved and focuses on digital sign ups for new services. This is clearly an area of the journey that has huge potential to drive positive customer satisfaction or irritate customers. More than any, kiosks need to continually analyze customer behavior and adapt to changing services and workflows.
Reduce Security And Regulatory Concerns
The need for higher levels of security is always a backdrop to any digital interaction. It is especially heightened when incorporating customer-centricity and personalization. A growing portion of customers have become more comfortable with accessing financial services using a digital device.
The issue of privacy does become trickier when personal data is used to target offers, even if they are on point. Determining where the acceptance line sits will continue to be an ongoing challenge for years to come. This is an area where scaling testing and experimentation on various touch points can help determine the optimal journey. The good news is that optimizations can be run without collecting personally identifiable information (PII). There are ways to drive outcomes and segmentations without encroaching on privacy issues. This can be accomplished while reducing page load times or the use of cookies.
Security leads right into regulatory and compliance mandates. The digital channels are subject to increasing scrutiny and the need to comply with Information Security (InfoSec) regulations. This is an area where Evolv AI has been able to remove any dependencies on third party JavaScripts or the use of cookies and eliminates the potential for script injections. As a result, Evolv AI clients are able to get through audits in as little as 30 minutes.
