Financial Services Insight:  The era of consumer individuality 

Post downturn Britain is seeing a new era of customer - powerful, self reliant, and individualistic; these customers take no prisoners and expect you to adapt to their demands.  Accepting this customer revolution is the first step to survival in this highly volatile market.   

Your customers want you to recognise them as individuals.  They also want to have control over the services offered to them.  After years of mass marketing and commoditisation, consumers now search for personalised offerings as their self reliance grows.  Remaining competitive in an increasingly tough environment means letting your customers express themselves and their preferences through their financial products and services.  By targeting consumer individualism you can attract customers looking for products to suit their individual needs. 

Improving customer satisfaction and increasing revenues are important goals for the FS market.  The first step to success is to customise your services and give customers some of the control they now expect.  In turn you will become highly attractive in this volatile landscape. 

Post-downturn, post- passive customers   

Fall out from the economic downturn has resulted in a host of new challenges.  New and existing players compete for a share of an increasingly cynical customer base, saturated with choice.  With 62% of global consumers having less trust in the banking industry than before the credit crunch, the market faces potentially damaging impacts on revenues. 

There is a plus side to all this doom and gloom however.  Even though banks have suffered collectively, many consumers feel their relationships with their personal banks have remained pretty unchanged.  Switching intentions are low in comparison to overall scepticism with 64% of global consumers having always had the same bank (FSCI, 2009). 

Developing a customer-centric strategy to retain your customers is therefore a much more effective approach than creating a one size fits all strategy and then deciding who to target. Knowing your customer and building a strategy around their needs will put you way ahead of the competition. 

Typical customer?  No such thing 

The idea of a typical customer needs to be abandoned.  Using basic demographic data to send marketing messages focusing on price just doesn't cut it anymore.  Understanding the complexities and changeability of customer needs will help you stand out in this highly competitive market. 

So how do you deliver a market leading customer experience? 

1. Treat consumers as individuals

The desire for self reliance and self expression amongst consumers cannot be ignored.  Developing products and services which cater to individual needs as well as providing tools that allow consumers to manage their own finances better is one way to achieve a customer-centric ethos. 

This is easily achieved for wealth managers with high net worth individuals but is a little trickier with mass market consumers.  Steps to address consumers by name in correspondence or offer specific products using CRM tools will result in simple but effective personalisation. 

Personalising the customer lifecycle at each point, and developing tailored rewards and loyalty schemes will enhance customer retention, acquisition and overall customer satisfaction. 

2. Choice   

Customisation and personalisation are concepts that are increasingly familiar to consumers in a range of everyday activities, from ordering a coffee right through to booking a holiday. In fact, consumers may have become so used to this that they are dissatisfied when they are unable to choose between such things as channels, delivery methods, colours, or ingredients. This is no different in the Financial Services sector.  Convenience is a powerful attraction device.  Allowing consumers to choose a contact channel they prefer, or to name an account to make identification easier, serves to make the consumer experience much simpler.  Nearly 75% of UK consumers prefer simple and straightforward communications and reflecting this throughout all aspects of your customer service will really enhance the customer experience. 

3. Keep it all in one place

Consumers like to be able to manage all of their financial products in one place, giving them the convenience, control and self reliance they crave.  There are only a small handful of financial services aggregators currently in the market so there's still plenty of opportunity.  There are significant regulatory and financial barriers to entry for new entrants into this market, and many customers will not trust a brand they have not heard of with their money.  Leveraging a trusted and valued brand name will benefit already established players.  Being able to fulfil customer desire to lead a simpler lifestyle will reduce the motivation to actively seek out alternative providers. Skilled customer service advisers with strong cross selling and upselling capabilities as well as complex call handling skills will become a must as part of this route. In addition the simplification of systems and automation of some processes will also enhance your holistic service provision. 

Give your customers what they want

Consumers want products that can be tailored to their individual needs and customised to reflect their personality and preferences.  Consumers also want to be self reliant and search for the products and services that can help them achieve this.  They like their provider to show authenticity, honesty and heritage and this can be achieved by adopting these values into all aspects of the customer strategy. It's never going to be possible to target all consumers individually but instead develop methods to make the consumer feel like an individual whilst still catering for the masses. 

For information on how to develop a market leading customer contact approach in the Financial Services industry contact Capita.