Industries like banking, government and healthcare face more challenges when it comes to delivering world-class customer experiences. For instance, banks must protect our data while using data-driven marketing to provide tailored experiences that raise customer satisfaction. To that point, 86% of companies say personalization is important to their business strategy, but less than half are in the implementation stage.¹

They also need an easier way to expand cloud infrastructure and fuel innovation. Security-rich, hybrid cloud solutions paired with customer experience platforms help banking professionals meet security and regulatory requirements. Banks can use this technology to take experiences to the next level by offering financial wellness services—and creating more valuable, individual experiences.

Use data to create financial wellness

What might this look like for a customer? Using AI for contextual insights, your bank offers you a low-interest loan if your monthly spending exceeds your monthly income. Ideally, this feels like a suggestion from a trusted advisor instead of a banking transaction. Or, imagine a digital mortgage experience where you can track the process easily versus the usual paper-heavy experience. Personalized, intelligent experiences make tasks simpler for customers and employees and drive deeper relationships.

Peer into the future of personalization, designed and delivered by IBM and Adobe.

The experience doesn’t stop with the customer. To transform your customer experience, you have to improve the employee experience too, so teams have the tools needed to effectively manage data and customize experiences for millions of customers. Marketing and analytics professionals often need to get data in the right place in a fraction of a second to deliver personalized experiences in near real-time. Poor data quality, difficulty managing data, lack of data integration and solution cost are the top challenges cited.¹ Given that many banks have complex infrastructures, this is difficult to achieve without customer experience tools in the cloud; data is housed in one place and used to enhance experiences.

Three ingredients transform customer experience

Maintaining and deploying cloud infrastructure and keeping it compliant is a massive undertaking and in some cases, banks look to service providers to manage their infrastructure, so they can focus on innovation. In fact, nearly half of firms surveyed say that technology limitations slow their personalization efforts.¹ By increasing the speed of access to leading customer experience platforms like Adobe, we make it easier for organizations to transform and manage their customer experience.

You need three ingredients to enable transformation: great platforms, seamless deployment without infrastructure hassles, and a security-enhanced hybrid cloud.

Previous banking models used on-premises deployment. A hybrid-cloud approach gives companies the ability to scale quickly, elevate customer journeys, and helps remove technology and resource barriers. With another cloud to host, you have to worry about security and integration compared to buying a solution once and deploying quickly.

Digital CX levels the playing field

Investing in digital customer experience offers an advantage for both national and regional banks. Larger companies can expand their customer reach and develop more meaningful, one-on-one relationships with customers, well beyond physical bank branches. On the other hand, regional banks or credit unions can defend and grow their business with digital experiences on par with larger institutions.

By investing in cloud services, you don’t need to build something from the ground up, which can be costly. Also, because a security-rich cloud is continuously refined to meet regulation standards, you’re likely to save on resource costs, which again, benefits large and small banks. Organizations share a similar goal—to provide best-in-class experiences, engage and assist customers on their terms, and deliver services in a security-enhanced way. This is good for customers and the industry and helps further long-term customer loyalty and new market standards.

Human experiences

Think about the customer as a human and what they want to solve. Let’s say a customer needs a loan to buy a car. Instead of just focusing on the loan, the bank also helps the customer find insurance, and even the car. Bundling services to address the customer’s total needs improves their experience and provides differentiated value. The emphasis is on the customer outcome.

It’s about removing friction and adding value to individual customer experiences faster and in a security-rich way. It’s also helpful to begin with the desired experience, and work your way back to the technology, data and analytics solution needed to make it happen … not the other way around.

Learn more about the IBM and Adobe partnership, which will provide regulated industries with Adobe customer experience platforms on IBM Cloud for Financial Services.

¹Personalization Demystified: Enchant Your Customers By Going From Good To Great, A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By IBM. February 2020.