How three financial service providers are using XM to improve their customer and employee experience

One of the headline findings from our recent study into the state of customer experience in financial services in Asia Pacific (APAC’s) was that, despite relatively high levels of consumer satisfaction with their banking and Insurance providers, people are still willing to switch in search of better and more personalized experiences, as well as flexible products.

This is a new challenge for financial service providers, because, not only is it easier than ever for consumers to switch providers, their needs, preferences, and demands have never been so diverse or rapidly changing either.

To help financial service providers adapt and succeed in these new environments, at XM Live: Experience Transformation in the FSI Industry, Qualtrics brought together leading brands across APAC to explore how they are using experience management (XM) to design and improve the customer, employee, brand, and product experiences they deliver.

Here we explore the experience transformations underway at ANZ, Standard Chartered, and bolttech, but be sure to watch the full event for more great examples and stories.

Using XM to design and improve the customer and employee experience at ANZ

Over the last decade, ANZ — one of Australia and New Zealand’s largest financial services companies — has developed a comprehensive experience management program to deliver on its mission to be a trusted advisor and coach of insight and foresight by understanding what our customers and people think, feel, decide, need and do to drive outcomes.

“The evolution of our experience management program is one from digital remediation to personalisation. Over that time the work we’ve done has become more and more complex,” said Michael Kalkaus, Product Owner, Research & Analytics at ANZ.

Experience management is now central to every customer and employee experience ANZ delivers, as proven by the actions taken during the Covid-19 pandemic.

To ensure critical banking services could be maintained during this time, ANZ used Qualtrics to capture information needed to apply for on-site worker permits — the infrastructure developed also allowed the organization to audit and govern the system as required. Alongside this, ANZ ran highly customized employee wellbeing health checks, equipping managers with valuable insights to help and support employees during this time. And finally, to help businesses navigate the economic challenges faced, the organization launched a program to understand the actions ANZ could take to help its customers overcome them.

As ANZ moves forward, it is using customer and employee insights to inform and guide innovation.

“The insights captured as part of our voice of the customer and employee programs are being reused to help us reiterate designs and ideas. This process drives additional value to the business at practically no extra cost,” added Kalkaus.

There are countless opportunities ahead for providers with experience management if they stay true to their vision, he concluded.

“As long as you are core to your proposition, there are a lot of use cases with Qualtrics to drive value. Used in the right way, experience management can be a lot more than just your original intent.”

How Standard Chartered benefits from ‘5 voices’

For the leading international bank Standard Chartered — which operates more than 1,200 branches across more than 70 countries — measuring and improving experiences extends well beyond simply listening to customers and employees.

To understand how Standard Chartered can design experiences that address consumer needs in the experience economy, the organization developed a five-point listening program with experience management spanning:

1. The customer – This includes collecting a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data on customers, such as their motivations and experiences, to identify how the company can help them realize their goals.
2. The employee – Standard Chartered realizes that great customer experience starts with a happy and motivated employee base. Using XM, the organization has constructed a comprehensive employee listening strategy to help leaders uncover and act on the workforce’s most pressing pain points.
3. The partner – Partner networks are important, and while organizations often choose their partners, great partners will soon be choosing their clients. To address this and ensure the organization remains a partner of choice, Standard Chartered listens closely to their partners’ experiences to measure how they stack up against others and understand what they can do to stay ahead.
4. The benchmark – Recognizing consumers often compare their experience with Standard Chartered to best-in-class organizations outside of the financial services industry. To make sure Standard Chartered is keeping up with the best, the company investigates what makes these organisations successful and what it can do to incorporate these processes within its own operations.
5. The future – All great organizations are forward thinking, and Standard Chartered is no different. By gathering data on market trends, the organization is continually developing and refining its vision for the future.

“Taking these five voices allows Standard Chartered to better empathize with our customers, which is key to success in the experience economy. Placing yourself in your customers’ shoes motivates you to take action and improve for their needs,” said Millie Gillon, Global Head of Client Experience, Managing Director for Retail Banking at Standard Chartered.

With a plethora of insights captured with its experience management program, Standard Chartered is able to put the customer at the center and design products and services around them.

“The insights captured are enabling design-thinking at Standard Chartered. We’re now able to continually iterate and design better solutions and experiences for our customers,” added Gillon.

How bolttech is transforming the future of insurance by improving customer experience

With consumers increasingly choosing to engage with digital-first financial service providers, at XM Live we also heard from bolttech — a rapidly growing insurtech business — about how it is using experience management to achieve its mission of transforming the future of insurance.

To satisfy the growing demand for digital services, bolttech’s insurance exchange platform is connecting supply and demand by making it easier to offer and distribute insurance. In just over 12 months, 7.7 million customers have already used the platform.

Central to bolttech’s growth and success is its commitment to delivering an industry-leading customer experience.

“Beyond making sure your customers’ digital experience is quick and simple, what’s key is meeting customers at their maturity level,” said Andrea Linander, Group Customer Experience Lead at bolttech.

Bolttech is putting experience management to use by capturing customer feedback and enabling it to consistently improve the experiences it delivers for current needs and behaviours, integrating experience data and operational data to understand and act on the drivers of good experiences, and identifying customer behaviours, preferences, and attitudes toward new services the insurtech business is considering launching.

Each process is seamlessly embedded into the customer journey and insights are available in real-time — two processes that are delivering significant value for bolttech.

“By incorporating each process into the customer journey, we can get feedback and follow up immediately. This means that instead of letting a customer reflect on a bad experience, within minutes we can proactively contact them to address their frustration.

“The robust governance models we’ve built with experience management are fundamental to bolttech’s success in building a customer-centric and data-driven company,” concluded Linander.

The opportunities ahead

What was clear from each of the examples we heard at XM Live is that, while measuring experiences is important, the real business value is found in acting on insights to continually design and improve the customer, employee, brand, and product experiences being delivered.

For financial services providers who are able to innovate and deliver the support and services customers and employees want, there are significant opportunities to deepen customer engagement, increase share of wallet and foster long-term brand loyalty.

Watch XM Live: Experience Transformation in the FSI Industry for more great examples of organizations succeeding with experience management.