[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2019\/08\/28\/financial-services-experience-gap\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2019\/08\/28\/financial-services-experience-gap\/","headline":"How to close the experience gap in the financial services industry","name":"How to close the experience gap in the financial services industry","description":"Sales performance is shaping CX. In the financial services industry, agents should be focused on customer experience as much as the need to sell.","datePublished":"2019-08-28","dateModified":"2024-07-17","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/ben-nottle\/#Person","name":"Ben Nottle","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/ben-nottle\/","identifier":372,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bbc3a08d508cdcf94c24a793eab9ff181edcc5d7cfcf672bf1b5ef598ad9a272?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bbc3a08d508cdcf94c24a793eab9ff181edcc5d7cfcf672bf1b5ef598ad9a272?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Future of Commerce","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","width":172,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/thumbnail-0d53e9dbf60b1ab010c630ff67be7635.jpeg","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/thumbnail-0d53e9dbf60b1ab010c630ff67be7635.jpeg","height":375,"width":1200},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2019\/08\/28\/financial-services-experience-gap\/","about":["Banking",{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/commerce\/finance\/","name":"Finance","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Finance","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q43015"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/sales\/","name":"Sales","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sales","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q194189"]},"Sales Success",{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/service\/service-general\/","name":"Service","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Service","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q7406919"]}],"wordCount":879,"keywords":["Customer Experience | CX","Experience Management","Finance","Financial Services","Retail Banking"],"articleBody":"The experience gap is real, across all sectors, for many different reasons.In the financial industries, relationship managers and insurance agents are sometimes the only contact a customer has with your institution. So why aren\u2019t they regarded as a more important part of the customer experience?You\u2019ve probably got at least one CX program in your business, or more likely, several run by different teams. They will, no doubt, be focused on customer satisfaction, brand perception, sentiment, and engagement. They’ll provide your business with insights and ideas that a decade ago wouldn\u2019t have been possible.But if your business is like many others in the financial services industry, CX-focused teams would benefit from spending a bit more time with the relationship managers or insurance agents.This may already happen. But the chances are it doesn\u2019t.The experience gap meets the finance industryAn experience gap has opened up between the experiences a company thinks it\u2019s providing and the experience customers are actually getting when they encounter sales, or any other teams in your financial institution: the experience gap. And it\u2019s creating unhappy customers.Research finds that 56% of customers who left a bank said it \u201cmade no effort to keep them.\u201d With 91% of customers surveyed reporting they have a \u201chigher expectation of sales than they had two years ago\u201d, it\u2019s clear that sales shouldn’t just be about selling. It should be about giving the customer an experience that will make them feel like a customer.Understanding how sales affects CX should be as much a part of your CX strategy as marketing and customer service.So, what\u2019s hindering this understanding?How optimizing sales performance management improves customer experienceThe way financial services businesses treat data is partly responsible, placing value on data that describes what\u2019s going on: the operational data of a business such as profit, win rate, agency attritions and so on, and often keeping this customer data within separate parts of the organization.But by itself that doesn\u2019t help understand what a customer thinks or wants, their emotions and sentiment, about the end-to-end experience they have with a company, its agents, and channel partners. That\u2019s understood with experience data, generated by brand perception and product satisfaction; data that\u2019s often in short supply.Where X data does exist, it\u2019s often inaccessible, making it hard to match to the impact of the operational data and creating holes in a business\u2019s understanding of its customer experience.Look at how the insurance industry operates. Most customers deal with agents, not the underwriter, so the underwriter has little direct experience and not much control of the customer experience. Customer feedback, the experience data, ends up with the agents, not the underwriter. And although it\u2019s in the agent\u2019s interests to create happy customers, the high attrition rate of agent\/underwriter relationships make it difficult to develop an understanding of how sales performance is shaping the customer experience.The experience gap between the two opens up and the customer falls into it.That gap needs to be closed in every FSI business. The solution requires listening to what customers want. It requires connecting operational data to experience data to see where the gaps are. It requires breaking down the siloes across the organization to get a complete view of the customer experience.Businesses are often very good at looking from the inside out, dealing with data from their own processes, but less effective when it comes to looking at those processes from the outside in, or the customer\u2019s viewpoint.How do you know what the customer experiences? Ask themUnderstanding what the customer experiences when they engage with an agent or a relationship manager will help to improve not only that experience, but hopefully the motivation of the agent or relationship manager as well. They should be focused as much on the customer experience as the need to sell.Motivate them to do this by linking remuneration and compensation to KPIs related to the customer experience. Ask customers what they think about their experiences. If a customer complains about an agent\u2019s behavior, send the agent on a coaching course. If customers aren\u2019t getting the advice they want, do your agents need training to give that advice? Or are your customers not getting to speak to the right agents? And if it looks like an agent was pushing a product too hard, perhaps it\u2019s time to review the way commission is paid for that product.Every time, look at how you can influence behavior to improve the customer\u2019s experience. But whatever you do, do something. Doing nothing is the slow death of research and data analysis, and a significant factor in the creation of the experience gap.As FSI businesses, especially priority\/ private banking and insurers, become providers of outcomes rather than just lenders or investors, customers will expect better experiences. Relationship manager or insurance agent is the first (and sometimes last) contact a customer has with a brand. It should be seen as integral to the creation of great experiences, and a vital resource in understanding how your customers think and feel.  The future of business is calling.RISE to the occasion."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"2019","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2019\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"08","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2019\/\/08\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"28","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2019\/\/08\/\/28\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"How to close the experience gap in the financial services industry","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2019\/08\/28\/financial-services-experience-gap\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]