The art of customer-centric experience optimization

John Symcox, director of innovation at First Fidelity Bank, explored the art of adjusting to customer needs during the event’s panel session: Maintaining Customer Intimacy in a Digital World, at CXN Live: CX Trends and Predictions.

Digital transformation in financial services

The onset of Covid-19 accelerated digital transformation for many institutions, including First Fidelity Bank. Symcox explained: “We [saw our] three or five month road-map turn into a six to 12 month roadmap. It became a scramble to figure out how we could empower our customers to continue [banking with us] in the changing environment.”

The realities of the pandemic pushed customer preferences away from in-branch banking. First Fidelity Bank needed to ensure customers could trust it to provide a high-quality service online. Symcox noted that the key lied in maintaining the personal connection that is inherent to branch banking, keeping human employees accessible so customers did not feel neglected and had guidance to adjust to self-serve channels.

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Customer-centric sentiment analysis

Another part of the innovation road map that was accelerated due to the pandemic was democratizing the value of data to customers.

Instead of just using sentiment reports and machine learning around customer psychology to inspire new features and better service prioritization for different personas, Symcox noted that the bank is exploring ways to empower customers with insights powered by their own data and behaviors.

According to the the bank’s sentiment analysis, the stress of the pandemic has heightened fear and concern around the stability of the future for many customers. Symcox stated, “A lot of fear has been happening over the last two years. Customers are saying, ‘I had a plan and then Covid-19 happened, and my world changed.” He added that this analysis is helping the bank optimize its service so it can better meet customer needs: “Now is a really [important] point in time for us to gage progression of sentiment [with our] customers.”