The Progression of the Banker Experience

Much has been written about the importance of the user experience of a bank’s customer. Just as critical, financial institutions should also pay careful attention to the user experiences of their own workforce. As bankers shift to providing customers with more advisory types of services, they will need to rely on a progression of capabilities designed to meet and anticipate the needs for the roles they will fill.

Such a progression of banker experiences offered by a bank’s technology partner should improve efficiency – by delivering role-based experiences, providing universal and advanced search features, and offering a logical structure to depict each customer’s unique sphere of influence within that bank.

Deliver role-based experiences

Your core technology partner should understand the expanding roles and responsibilities of today’s bankers. Their interaction with a system or application should provide:

• A familiar look and feel, similar to what they use on their personal devices
• Relevant information, including both bank-specific and web-based content
• Dynamic presentation based on user entitlements

Roles should be based on the job functions of the individual employee and ensure coverage of all their responsibilities within the bank. A sound banker experience must strike a thoughtful balance between sophistication and simplicity. Don’t overwhelm a user with too many unnecessary choices and concurrently, provide automation needed to save time on redundant and mundane tasks.

Bankers should receive the necessary alerts vital to their job functions and online help should reflect the context of the current task they are executing. Intuitive navigation, coupled with integrated applications, are the standards your technology partner must bring to your bank on a consistent basis.

Provide universal and advanced search

Providing context-sensitive searching is “table stakes” for any fintech provider today. When faced with a live customer expecting an immediate answer, a banker needs access to relevant content rapidly. Searching can be as simple as looking up a customer’s name, such as John Smith, but must also quickly locate customers by email address, phone number and even the last four digits of a TIN, account number or card number.

Offer 360-degree views and beyond

Your banking technology provider should offer a consistent bank user experience throughout all applications within your platform: loans, deposits, customer information, etc. With the increase of componentization and the expansion of digital capabilities, the expectation of obtaining a 360-degree view of the customer has expanded.

The user experience should include products processed within the core – such as deposits and loans – along with products processed outside the core, such as credit cards. It should also include all digital channels and other services. When a banker accesses a customer, the 360-degree view should allow them to completely assess and understand all the customer’s product relationships and thus allow the banker to confidently cross-sell other products and services.

To make the 360-degree customer view even more beneficial, the banker experience must also provide insight into their customer’s sphere of influence. From that insight, other customer relationships – such as a customer’s entire portfolio, including households and business accounts – become available.

A sphere of influence can include:

• Household relationships of an individual account holder – what family members bank at the institution
• Business relationships, such as customer’s association with other firms banking with that bank

A relationship summary should coalesce the preceding information into actionable intelligence for the client-focused banker.

Taking the banker experience on the road

The progressive banker experience must be accessible on technology both within and outside the bank. New technology should responsively provide bankers with the same powerful portfolio presentations and role-based tools while interacting with customers at special events or during sales calls. A mobile banker requires tablet banking experiences wherever he or she needs them to conduct business.

The banker experience improves your customer’s experience

According to Forrester Research, companies will win or lose based on customer experience (CX), and CX is still the vital point of differentiation and growth. Improving the technology experiences of your front-line bankers not only increases efficiency, but also improves service levels of your customers – giving them the exceptional experiences consumers expect from their primary financial institution.