Bank Customer Experience Summit will examine customer journey

The Bank Customer Experience Summit, which will be held Sept. 12 to 13 in Charlotte, North Carolina, will feature a range of panels discussing issues surrounding customer experience.

The annual event, held in tandem with the Interactive Customer Experience Summit from Sept. 11 to 13, will take a look at how banks can craft the customer journey during one panel discussion titled, "How banks can craft the customer journey."

Jerone Abueva, director of B2B solutions and business development for the financial services industry at Samsung Electronics America, will moderate the panel with panelists Lindsey Ogan, marketing director at Stride Bank, Courtney O'Regan, SVP and director of marketing at Middlesex Savings Bank and Liz Schaaf, VP, business line experience strategy manager at Atlantic Union Bank.

While banks have made efforts to improve the customer experience, many customers still feel disconnected from their banks, especially in light of recent concerns over bank's stability following the collapse of First Republic, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

During the panel, the experts will examine ways to overcome this disconnect by following best practices to create a frictionless customer journey, which, in turn, will guide a customer from onboarding to deeper engagement.

"The customer journey must be fully connected end-to-end. Despite the rise of digital, face-to-face engagements/interactions in branches still matter to customers and are the core of the customer journey. Bank branches enable banks to build trust with customers, provide valuable advice, and provides a platform for banks to truly build and create what their brand stands for and feels like," Abueva said in an email interview.

"With customers always connected today, they are looking for experiences that are seamless from online to over the phone to in-person. They expect their brands to know what their last conversation was and have their next interaction leave off from the last touchpoint. CX is about personalization, ease, convenience, and impactful moments."

When asked what the most important issue is in regards to the customer journey, Ogan pointed out that with the onset of AI tools, banks should begin to experiment to meet customer expectations.

"The industry as a whole has been relatively slow to adapt to changing customer expectations as technology has changed. Especially in the community banking space where leadership teams have been traditionally slow to justify large capital investments in technology and the talent that can drive it forward, if banks are still trying to catch up with Amazon and Netflix, ChatGPT is going to move the goalposts even further, faster," Ogan said in an email interview.

"We don't yet know exactly how AI will be deployed by big tech that we interact with every day as consumers and embedded into every touch point of our lives, but we know that there are huge investments being made by pretty much every tech company into leveraging AI to shape everything we do. They will be successful, for better and/or worse. Banks will have to learn how to manage risk, protect data, and operate within regulatory guidelines without getting left completely in the dust from a customer experience perspective."

Ogan said customers don't have the patience to have to go looking for what they need, whether it be a new book, show or product, and that includes banking services.

"I will expect my bank to know, without any solicitation on my part, when I'm ready to act on an offer then proactively put it in front of me at the right moment Then, I'll expect to be able to take action on it seamlessly and digitally," Ogan said. "This requires an entirely different skill set for many of us in the banking space, and it will require us to hire differently, train differently, invest differently, and rethink our core competencies through the lens of partnership and collaboration with fintechs instead of the lens of competition that is still pervasive through much of the industry."

So how to respond to this challenge? Ogan recommends banks adopt a position of listening to what customers actually want and delivering those personalized experiences.

"We need to understand how consumer behavior and expectations are changing, as they are changing, then we need to have the systems and processes in place to adjust and adapt quickly if we are going to win business in the future," Ogan said.

To attend the panel, click here to register for the Bank Customer Experience Summit. One pass gains attendees entry into the Interactive Customer Experience Summit as well. Use the code AMCEDIT20 at checkout for 20% off. Early bird pricing ends June 23.