‘We give employees ammunition to provide best in class service’

Interview with UBS Wealth Management’s APAC CDO about the importance of internal culture and the power of an emotional connection with customers.  EPISODE OVERVIEW:

Ketan Samani is the Managing Director, Chief Digital Officer at UBS Wealth Management (APAC), where he delivers innovation, develops digital capabilities, and modernises digital channels. In this week’s CX Network podcast theatre interview with host Seth Adler, he discusses the transformation digitalisation has brought the customer ecosystem at the financial institution.

He draws upon his background in contact centres and the impact those years of listening to customers has had on how he views customer service today. Samani has taken these learnings on board while heading up digital and innovations at UBS Wealth Management to not only optimise the customer experience but the employee experience too.

“We are result orientated. Client experience is about can we deliver and how we deliver. And do we go beyond the delivery asked from us. Could we anticipate the next step for the client? As clients try to resolve a problem, it's anticipating once that problem is resolved, what will they think next?”

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KEY QUOTES:

1. The importance of the customer’s emotional need

“Advice can only be given when we spend enormous amount of time and effort in the right way to get to know our clients. Every other bank can provide wealth management service today, whether it's regional or international.

“What differentiates a bank is how much energy and quality of people and services they put in front of the client; to understand the complexity and emotional need of the consumer. To me, that is really important.

“In a banking world 20 years ago, I don't think the emotional need of a consumer was amplified. Today, because of digital, because of social media, amplification of emotional need is very high.”

2. Understand the customer as a person

“Let me talk about client experience in contact centre context. What I really enjoyed was sharpening up my hearing senses.

“When you work in a contact centre for two years, three years, four years, and you're listening to the consumer talking about their financial challenges – they've lost a card or they were this problem or that problem – you can actually feel the emotions through your ears.

“If you can understand another person's anxiety and challenges, you are able to resolve it and you feel the relief they feel at the other end, it's a very beautiful experience. It sets you up around client experience in a different way.”

3. Anticipate the need of the employees

“UBS employs probably one of the best in class quality staff around the world. We are number one. We attract best in class talent. And we apply this talent both on a digital front as well as on a physical front.

“It's around creating internal cultures. We think about and anticipate the need of our staff. My job is to constantly curate problem statements and use cases in technical terms from various functional heads in the bank. And look to provide digital solutions where they have not got a physical capability to take on the challenge or resolve the problem they have. And then ultimately synthesise to ensure that anything we do digitally allows them to deliver best in class services.

“So if you are an employee, you will be better served knowing that you can turn to operations, you can turn to technology, you can turn to digital, and you can turn to product for the services. And collectively we can give them the ammunition to go out there and provide best in class service to the client.”