Monday, September 18, 2006

Building the Organization of the future

James Taylor has been looking at Using decisioning to build the bank of the future. In it he picks up on several key themes that I agree are important. I would summarize them as:
  • Customer identification
    • Always identify the customer
    • Make the interaction experience more personal and appropriate
    • Not request the customer to re-identify themselves for every activity requested
  • Cross-channel consistency
    • Ensure that a customer's interactions follow the same preferences and approach across all the contact points they have with the bank
    • Enable services and transactions selected in one channel to be used across others
  • Personalization
    • Ability for a customer to select preferences for the way interactions work
    • Provide themes that drive how the activities are presented and run (e.g. fast, step-by-step, most used options, etc) - personalization isn't just about choosing the color of your website
    • Ensure preferences are remembered and used across all channels
  • Individualization
    • Offer the customer options in the way they interact based on observed behavior
  • Cross/up-sell of services
    • Predictive selection of offers that are most appropriate to the customer and not likely to be an annoyance
    • Target offers to the channel - a customer making a fast cash withdrawal from an ATM probably does not want to be hassled with other offers

In his post, James lists the key channels as being:
  • ATM
  • Call center/Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
  • Website
  • Branch
  • Monthly statement

I hadn't thought about the last one (as I only get my statement online), but it is an important point of customer interaction. In addition, I would like to extend the channels to include 'mass marketing' - the postal and phone based marketing that is pushed to customers and can be an annoyance alongside an otherwise acceptable service. Especially the use of postal mass-mailings when a customer has selected to have all other statements and communications delivered online (personal rant complete!).

The rules that James has highlighted are not really bank specific, and could be easily applied to the "Wireless or Mobile Phone Service of the Future", the "Government of the Future", and the "Utility Company of the Future". Achieving the goal of "Organization of the Future" requires a combination of technologies, processes, identity management, integration and analytics, all of which exist today. What is needed are some smart people to push the business drivers, building teams to perform the process design, the technology implementations and the systems integrations. The Organization of the Future is a possibility, it just needs the Organization to realize the value.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the structure of principles in the Bank of the Future.

I would add a couple of channels, and take one away. I see statements as old news. In Canada all Banks (except one) allow customers to turn off statements now. In place they can view their account details within online banking, and in the case of Royal Bank of Canada, go back 7 years.

The channel I would add is wireless. Both from the perspective of viewing online banking, paying bills etc and the perspective of account alerts.

Phil Ayres said...

Colin, good point on adding the wireless channel. Seems like an essential piece, and perhaps should be an area where banks and mobile carriers could team up to provide some smart services.

I don't have a strong opinion about statements. I think that including it at least helps focus the bank on the fact that they need to find effective ways of delivering this information. I'm not a big fan of the 'PDF statement' delivered online. But its a familiar look to most customers, making it accessible to people of my parents' generation!

Phil