Fintech is hands-down one of the biggest tech trends of the past decade. Fintech-powered technologies have revolutionized almost every segment of the financial industry – from insurance and investment to payment gateways across continents – with the few that remain expected to taste the power of fintech over the coming years.

The impact of fintech also shows in the numbers. Fintech startups raised around $8 billion in VC funding over the past two quarters in 2018, with Q2 registering a record-setting $5.2 billion in investment.

Still, even with the good numbers and even better prospects out in the field, most facets of fintech are still quite new. Players will have to chart new grounds for CX, largely because of the expanded role of technology as an intermediary between the average fintech company and its customers.

Here are some of the most significant challenges for companies within this space that are looking to improve CX.

• Redefining traditional CX within the industry

For years, regular customers had been subjected to sub par treatment from traditional financial institutions like banks and credit unions. Apart from the invention of the ATM back in the 1960s, banks generally stayed away from user-oriented technologies that would have improved customer experience.

Customers also had to deal with long queues, customer service reps who really didn’t care about the customer, long and tedious load application processes, and other negative experiences that made it a nightmare to walk into a traditional banking hall.

Poor CX is actually one of the main reasons why many fintech startups have thrived in recent years. For many of them, CX is a standard service offering, thanks to the incorporation of technologies such as artificial intelligence and mobile/internet banking in many banking processes.

However, these startups still have their work cut out for them. With traditional banks having destroyed CX in the financial and banking industry over a long period, fintech startups will need to redefine CX and focus on revamping user experience.

• Information privacy and data security

Staying safe on the internet is always an issue when sensitive information and data is transmitted via networked connections. 2018 saw some of the biggest security breaches in recent years, with the Equifax and Yahoo! data breaches going down as the biggest hacks of all time. Plus, with more people and things becoming connected to the internet, some of these hacks won’t need to be sophisticated and may even begin from your home Wi-Fi connection, as this ForRent infographic illustrates.

With fintech, nearly every technological innovation revolves around internet connectivity. While digital banking, blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies, and other facets of fintech continue to revolutionize CX, they also increase risk levels associated with confidentiality and security of customer data.

Going forward, the biggest challenge here for fintech startups will be to improve the safety and security of data during online transactions.

• Ease of access and usability

No one wants to spend hours setting up an online account when they could have spent a few minutes opening an account at a local bank. One 2017 study found that convenience, swift registration, and overall usefulness and usability of the UI were the most important aspects of mobile payment services.

Even though ease of use and accessibility remain the biggest selling points for fintech startups, a good number of customers often get lost during navigation, which creates barriers for widespread adoption.

For fintech companies, every platform should be user-friendly, with simple UIs on mobile apps and websites to help improve the user’s experience.

• Providing custom experiences for the growing millennial population.

In 2017, millennials surpassed Generation X to become the largest portion of the American labor force. This group also represents over $200 billion in annual purchasing power, making them a significant demographic for fintech companies. Most of the people in this group grew up online, with most of them ditching traditional banking systems for financial companies that are riding the fintech wave.

With so much at stake, fintech companies will need to design products and service offerings that speak to this generation. Millennials are hungrier for custom and more personalized experiences compared with other generations.

To keep up, this requires fintech startups to rethink traditional ways of improving CX.

Fintech Companies          Biggest CX Obstacles        CX Strategy             Customer Experience        Fintech Startups       Traditional CX

Today’s rapid pace of disruptive change is shaping customer expectations and, therefore, Customer Experience (CX) in ways that threaten to leave less agile brands behind.

What’s more, customers are judging brands against their most recent stellar customer experience. Your CX must be on par or your business future could be in question.

“Customer Experience is at the top of every business’ priority list. It concerns the CEO to the CMO and even the CIO. Emerging technology, changing consumer needs and effective use of customer data are critical elements to ensuring your Customer Experience Strategy is as powerful as possible in a competitive and digital landscape.”

In this article, we’ll look Top disruptions that have contributed to and are shaping Customer Experience and Customer Experience strategies today.

The increased pace of change.

Technological advances are unfolding at a vastly accelerated pace and it seems that not a day goes by without the next groundbreaking development emerging. What was groundbreaking yesterday is yesterday’s news today – I am being facetious but the reality is that the half-life of technology seems to shrink every year.

The challenge in all this from a Customer Experience perspective is to identify what is useful, relevant and desirable. The big wins being realized from this disruption happen when technology is humanized and made relevant to real people.

Abundance of customer data.

These days, brands are collecting vast amounts of data about customers, their interactions, buying preferences and behaviors, and more. Essentially, data can be collected in three ways:

• By asking customers for it directly (via profiles and preferences).
• By indirectly tracking customers (via interaction analytics).
• By connecting other data sources to our own (via third-party data providers).

Data collection on this scale, and the manipulation of the data collected represents a huge opportunity for the savvy disruptors to gain a competitive advantage and secure big wins over the competition.

Bear in mind, however, that in order to get the most from big data’s potential, it’s necessary to “translate” the information into actionable strategies that companies can use to grow sales, increase profitability and enhance Customer Experience. “Actionable” is key. If your translation is too complicated or doesn’t clearly demonstrate value, there’s a real danger it will be ignored.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)

Most applications of AI for business lie in the AI subset of machine learning. Programmers have designed clever algorithms that can “learn” from previous results and shape outputs based on that accumulated knowledge. These capabilities are being leveraged today to detect patterns in customer data, behavior and needs which, in turn, enable enhanced customer experiences through hyper-personalization and responsive customer service.

However, AI still has a long way to go and a massive amount of disruption is still lurking somewhere down the road. If you consider machine learning as functioning on a single layer between input and output, deep learning (the future) will function across complicated cross-functional networks, multiplying its output capabilities exponentially.

Video.

While you might consider video as being yesterday’s disruptor, it deserves a special mention because not only has it turned the way we consume information on its head, there are serious downsides to not engaging with video.

A good example is how video relates to your business website – if you’re looking to get found in organic search that is. One of the metrics Google uses to determine the relevance of your website or web page is “dwell time”, which is how long a user spends on page. Video greatly enhances this metric.

Brands today can leverage video in old and new ways to enhance customer experience – old, but still good, as in step-by-step instructions on how to use your product or new as in a virtual reality video that allows you to test drive a car when you can’t go to a dealership.

The seamless omni-channel experience.

Regardless of whether you use Salesforce to manage customer support, SAP to manage orders and Riversand (Product Information Management or PIM software) to manage product information, your customers expect a seamless and unified customer experience that doesn’t require them to hop across systems/applications to do what they need to do. This implies integration across your enterprise.

This holds true regardless of how your customers choose to interact with your brand, be it via the web, a mobile device, social media, IVR, a call center, chat or any other available channel. A seamless omni-channel experience, with a strong and relevant brand presence at each stage of your customer’s journey, is key to delivering a superior customer experience, encouraging brand loyalty and maximizing customer satisfaction.

Seamless CX Spells Opportunity For Your Business.

Intelligent use of customer data and integrated digital experience platforms represent a serious opportunity for savvy businesses to outperform their competitors. A seamless omnichannel experience, with a strong and relevant brand presence at each stage of your customer’s journey, with the right message and functionality, delivers a superior and compelling CX that builds trust and relationships.

The mantra of modern enterprise is “disrupt to deliver more value” — use it to your advantage for CX.

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