Welcome to the Power of the Micro-Moment: Winning Customers’ Loyalty When It Counts podcast. My name’s Casey Murray, and I’ll be your host for this session. I’m joined by two excellent panelists, both of whom will bring some really helpful perspectives on strategy specific to technology that can help you from the acquisition and onboarding process, make sure that you get off to that right foot with a customer, and meet their expectations. Lots of good data shows how important that is that you do that as a provider, and you’re going to get a chance to hear some perspectives, and some lessons learned, and a few specific technology recommendations that’ll help you get those journeys started on the right foot.
Looking at attributes like speed, and ease of use, and how do you tailor it, and personalize it. We, as consumers, are all pretty high demand right now, and when we want to have an interaction, especially with a new provider, we’ve got certain expectations, and if you’re not hitting them, there is a consequence. Our goal with this session will be that you can evaluate where you are today, how well you’re maybe doing at that, what are some of your options, can you do some of these things yourselves, or should you lean on a commercial partner that could provide software-as-a-service that’s going to help you accelerate that?
We’ll dive very specifically into the financial service arena, but we’ll also start at a high level of just saying, “Hey, in general, what are some best practices that you should be looking at here today?”
Let me introduce my two panelists. Brie Tascione is the Chief Marketing Officer of Relay Network. Brie, good morning.
Brie Tascione
Hello.
Casey Murray
Hello, and Eric Hathaway is the VP of Marketing at Zoot Solutions.
Eric Hathaway
Hi.
Casey Murray
From the two of you today, I’m going to give you some questions, and I’ll play the moderator. Brie, I’ll start with you. What are you seeing at that sort of high level in terms of some best practices in this arena, and what should people be thinking about?
Brie Tascione
Sure, so what we’re seeing is that customer experience continues to reign supreme. It outranks product and price in terms of importance, and it continues to top CEO lists of strategic initiatives. It’s where everyone is investing today. What’s really evolving is that 2018 has shaped up to be the year of personalization. Customers expect service to be hyperpersonalized. Simple and complete. Everything that we’re doing, we want to know that solutions, and products, and services are built specifically for my need, my situation, my preferences, and my tastes.
What’s changing, or what we’re continuing to see evolve at rapid pace is just that sheer number of moments of needs that customers have. The proliferation of mobile has created this situation where these moments along the customer lifecycle are splintering into micro-moments. All those little interactions that make up an entire journey for a customer. We now look at every interaction we have as make-or-break with a company, and when we’re not satisfied with that experience, we consider taking our business elsewhere, or we talk about it, we bring it to social channels. We are always putting experience at the forefront of how we evaluate companies.
Meeting these expectations is imperative for business. It used to be a nice-to-have, right? We talked about customer experience and satisfaction as a soft benefit, but what we’re seeing and what the data is proving is that customer satisfaction is having a direct impact on revenue growth, profitability, retention. It’s really impacting that bottom line. Businesses are finding themselves in a position where they have to find new ways to engage their customers so that they can serve them in those micro-moments and deliver the types of experiences that customers have come to expect.
Casey Murray
You mention micro-moments. For people maybe hearing that term, if we dig into that for just a second, and if we compare it maybe to one size fits all, which somehow marketers are forced to, sometimes, just put all the content out there and hope you find it. What’s the relationship between a micro-moment, and how does it contrast with a one size fits all approach?
Brie Tascione
Yeah, well it’s a good question. Really, you have to look at the tools and the channels that have been available to us thus far or available to business, which have largely been these sort of come and get destinations. Things like apps and portals, websites, things where they’re publishing a lot of content and resources, and tools for the customer. The problem is that those tools have become generalized. It’s meant to solve all customers, all use cases, and in the process, it’s created a bit of content overkill.
When customers get there, they’re forced to do the work to navigate through all the content to find the information that’s relevant to them at that moment. This is in direct contrast with what customers have actually said they want. They want, rather, the information to be delivered directly to them, and for that content to be designed to serve their very specific need at that moment. “What is the experience I’m going through? What is the interaction I’m having with this business? Point me to the thing I need. Don’t make me come and get it.” It’s largely the reason we’re seeing apps declining or plateauing. Customers are downloading zero apps on average every month. Companies’ portals are not being utilized the way businesses would have liked to see, and so ROI is flat. A lot of those existing channels where we put a lot of investment and energy aren’t proving to be as successful as we had hoped.
Casey Murray
Great. Good. Eric, as we turn to you, and we start to think about, how does this apply to financial service industry in that really critical juncture of just getting them started, even in the acquisition state? What are some of the things that you see, and why is that so important to execute well in that acquisition process?
Eric Hathaway
Yeah, I think that Brie touches on a very interesting point in regards to the customer. For so many years, and especially in financial services, a far slower moving industry than some of the others out there, that it used to be where the financial institution would say, “These are the products that we offer, these are the products that you want, and this is how you buy them.” As the economy has shifted, as the customer has shifted, and how they are now driving what they want, and the institutions are having to cater to that. There is so many, like Brie said, there’s so many different apps, there’s so many front ends, and it was about a look feel.
Now it’s really about how quickly can we get a product into a customer’s hands? Simple, easy, clean, and build that trust with that customer so that they stick with us. There’s that stickiness. That’s one of the other things, and I think that’s where the pre and post are both very important, in regard to the fact that so many companies out there make it easy to switch, so that you have to continue to engage that customer, not only on that front end, but also continuing down the customer journey.
Casey Murray
As you look at your perspective on the financial, that easy to switch, the turn, that’s one of the downsides. Are there any things that you can do? How does speed play a role in earning someone as a customer that’s less likely to turn?
Eric Hathaway
Absolutely. In that onboarding process to try and get that customer onboard, get a product in their hands. For instance, whether it be an account opening, credit card, whatever the product is, how do we get to that customer, number one? Then, how can you get them to be accepted very quickly and without that sort of two to three week delay? That’s really about that micro-moment. I think there’s a lot of technology out there now that can enhance that experience, and almost in subseconds get decisions back to a customer, to say, “Yes, you are approved.”
Then there’s that post exercise of, “How do we continue to communicate with them until they actually have the ability to spend on either account or credit card?” I believe it really comes down to some technologies that are out there, and access to data, and creating that very, very quick, smooth customer experience.
Casey Murray
Yeah. I know, I mean from my experience, helping some other customer experience survey solutions, there’s great data that shows your first 90 days generally interacting sets the bar, and it’s very hard to fix it, but if you do it well, you’ll keep it high, and they’ll actually give you more tolerance as a provider. If you come in low, it’s very challenging to really improve that. There’s high stakes here.
Brie, back to you. In terms of trends and other things that you’re seeing, and I know we’ve got some good data from companies like Deloitte that have been helpful for us to mine, to help set strategy, what are some other things that you see as really important to be evaluating?
Brie Tascione
Yeah, so customer experience in banking, specifically, is known to have a huge impact on the bottom line. When you look at the net promoter scores, right? The likelihood of a customer to recommend you to friends and family. When you’re in that promoter category, where a customer is likely to recommend you, on average the lifetime value of that customer is about two and a half times the value of a detractor.
A detractor is 2.3 times more likely to switch. The point that Eric made about how easy it is for companies, or for customers now, to switch, when you’re not focusing on the customer experience and taking every interaction you have with that customer seriously, it’s really easy for them to move, and they’re likely to be thinking about it. It’s top of mind. They say, “Hey, if I don’t get what I need here, I’m taking my business elsewhere.”
When you dig into it, you’re then forced to ask, “Well, what does an exceptional customer experience look like in banking?” That’s where all of those elements that you and Eric just referenced really ring true. It’s about speed, ease, and context as the things that customers list as the most important. A recent study that Deloitte just did in 2017, they surveyed 3,000 customers who just recently opened a bank account, and they asked them to rate that experience. While overall the experience was generally favorable, there were a few areas that customers cited as needing the most improvement, and they’re the exact things that Eric just referenced.
The first is speed. They want an account opening experience to be easy and quick. They want to know exactly the moment that a decision has been made, and they want that to happen at the speed of light. The second is that followup opportunity, communications. They felt as though the banks really lacked, or were following short in, delivering clear, concise, straightforward communications to that customer to help them walk through the process of opening the account, and then post account, what that customer needed to do to take advantage of all the benefits of that account, or to notify them about critical things pertaining to their account, or service updates. These are basic things that banks were falling short of, which customers cited as the areas that really contributed to dissatisfaction.
Casey Murray
That’s helpful. Eric, I’m going to give you a question, and also the forum to share a little bit about, actually, what Zoot provides in this process, but let’s drill down into that acquisition state. You’re trying to get someone on board. Maybe they’ve done a credit card application, or whatever their interaction might be. You’re trying to earn them as a new customer. Take us through that process, some of the pitfalls that make it hard, and a little bit of how Zoot tries to help people address that.
Eric Hathaway
I think what a lot of people don’t understand, they go online, they sign up for a bank account, they have typically in the past, have to then go into the branch, sign some documents to open up account. Typically, credit cards have been a little easier process, but even that can have delays. I think a lot of people don’t understand. “I just want it in my hand. I want it now. Why can’t I have it?”
What’s really important to understand is that these institutions have checks and balances against fraud, against who that person is, what device they’re applying from, and that’s a security issue. You know, many of our clients will have somewhere between three to 500 different attributes from anywhere from three to 10 different data sources that they’re pulling in information in that decision process. That’s what has typically caused many of the delays, or that reason for that customer to have to come into the bank.
Most recently, we’ve seen regulation open up to where there’s going to be actual mobile account opening, and so you won’t have to go into that branch. That increases the number of data points that have to be checked. What Zoot does as a provider, is we provide that decision engine up front, so that as you’re applying, many of those checks, whether you’ve got three or four different fraud providers, from internal data, the consortium data with the credit bureaus, et cetera. They can pull that data in and make a decision within a subsecond. That comes back to that micro-moment conversation we were having.
In the past, or a lot of institutions that don’t have that kind of decisioning engine on the front end, they may get a decision back, but then a branch executive would have to take a look at it and say, “Okay, there is potential fraud here. Let’s look at this.” That’s that moment of maybe a day or two days where that indecision doesn’t happen, or the customer doesn’t hear back, they have the opportunity to go off to another provider and look for another product. That’s why that technology upfront, and what Zoot does specifically, in bringing that data together, giving a decision back very, very quickly to say, “Yes, you have a card. Yes, you have an account. Here’s the kind of information that you need going forward on that.”
Then, it’s really the way that Relay and Zoot have looked at working together, is then Relay steps in to be able to communicate with that client about all of the benefits of that product post-application.
Casey Murray
Yeah. Do you find, Eric, that your company, as it partners with people, sort of evaluating this space, do you get into tradeoff discussions with them? They may try to do it themselves, or they may try to speed something else up along the way, because they’re feeling that competitive pressure, but what are some example, either tradeoffs, or how do you act as almost advisors in this process in some way, kind of coaching them on some best practices?
Eric Hathaway
Yeah, it’s a great question, and there are actually two major tradeoffs, and it has to do with cost of the acquisition, which is one in regards to both data sources, interestingly enough, and in engine. Banks can actually negotiate and contract with the data sources individually, but then they may have to pull that data in at different stages during the customer onboarding experience. In that realm, they may try to develop an engine themselves or a process themselves.
We’ve actually had an example of a client a few years back that decided to do it internally. Very large client. They spend almost two years, and close to three and a half million dollars until they turned around and realized they couldn’t do it on their own. There’s not only the engine itself, but then there’s the data sources. Once they decided to go with an engine, it was then about how many different kinds of data sources are we going to be checking? As they were trying to do it themselves, they realized how difficult that was, where with an engine like a Zoot that has contracts with many of these data sources, it’s sort of a plug and play model. I think that’s really the tradeoff, is what kind of cost upfront is an institution willing to put in to create that very smooth, quick, instant sort of micro-moment for that customer?
Casey Murray
Great. Where does Relay pick up that handoff, Brie? If you look at, we’ve gone through the acquisition, maybe now we are getting ready to be onboarded. What are the challenges that customers may be facing, or I should say clients on themselves and serving their customers, and how does Relay jump in to sort of solve that problem?
Brie Tascione
Yeah, well there’s so much focus that’s been put on the customer acquisition that oftentimes there’s a falloff that happens post-acquisition. What we’re seeing now is the value of that post-acquisition relationship, that there’s so much opportunity for growth and expansion, and overall just retention by ensuring that that customer is being served the way they need to be serviced.
It doesn’t require a whole lot to do that, but it just requires looking at what the customers’ needs are throughout the lifecycle. It’s relatively easy to find or expose within the organization. It can be found by looking at the top calls into your call center, or where things tend to drop off online, where there are friction points where customers are not engaging with you where they should be or where you need a response. We look at these as opportunities to deliver information proactively to that customer, so that you can get ahead of the question. You don’t need to wait for them to come to you.
Eric referenced the security element, and what was interesting in that customer survey that I referenced from Deloitte is that customers overall see security protocols as beneficial. What they may not understand is why they’re happening, or why they’re required, or how it’s going to benefit them specifically. Even taking something like the process, and what’s involved in a decision when somebody is applying for an account, by communicating that to a customer, by letting them know why it might take a little bit longer, or where there’s indecision. That makes the customer actually feel protected and secure, that their information is being treated seriously.
I’ll reference an example in credit cards. I hear often from customers, “You know, I don’t want to bother my customers by reaching out to them too much, and how do I know when I’m sending too many communications?” Customers have spoken, and they’re saying that they want to hear more from the banks, or the businesses that they work with, that over communication is better, because if those communications are helping them get something done, or helping them save time, or save money in some way, that the customer will see those things as nice-to-haves. They want them, and they actually raise their hand and say, “Give me more of them.”
If you were to take something like a credit card application. You know, a customer comes through, applies for that credit card, they’re wondering the moment they hit submit on that credit card, “When will I have an answer? What happens next? When will I get my card in the mail? Is there a digital version I can use before my card arrives? What are the benefits again? How do I know if I’m making the most out of this rewards program? When is my payment due? What are the options? What’s my credit limit? Should I increase it?” There’s a whole host of questions that we’ve all experienced as consumers, but what we’re not doing enough of is delivering the answers in a bite size, easy to consume way, that makes it really easy for the customer to take action on those things.
If you think about what we ask a customer to do today, we send them a big direct mail kit that has a ton of information on sheets and sheets of paper, we send them various emails that got caught up in spam folders, we ask them to come in and download an app to self- navigate and hope that they find what they need to get to. What actually needs to happen is to deliver that information in a way that’s easy to find, where you’re delivering it on a channel that’s highly responsive. Customers overwhelmingly want to receive those communications via mobile.
What Relay is doing, is we would take a handoff directly, we could step in at any moment, from the moment that that application is submitted, and establish an ongoing persistent, consistent service channel to that customer, where then the bank can communicate with them directly about the status of their application and all of the micro-moments that happen thereafter.
Casey Murray
I can add from just watching other industry trends, there’s customers that want us … We as buyers expect you to use the data you have about me. You can almost get frustrated if they send you an irrelevant coupon or some message that doesn’t apply. I think both of these solutions today that we’re talking about are ways to leverage the data that you might have, or to make that better micro-moment.
Again, the consequences that we as buyers, consumers out there, we’re going to end up wanting to go with brands that have done the better job of that, and the more personalized and tailored the experience, the better. Those are really the stakes that we’re talking about there. Did you have more to add in terms of after the account opening, or was that sort of all in terms of the messaging component there?
Brie Tascione
Yeah. I think that post-opening, that really simple things that banks can do is follow up to see if they have questions, or ask them about the experience. What are their needs? Customers want to receive product and service suggestions that are highly relevant to them. They want to receive that basic account information. We have to keep in mind that our customers are customers of many businesses. We’re not at the center of their lives. While it may be at the top of our list of priorities, and our agendas, and we think to ourselves, “Of course they know this,” the reality is most of the time they don’t, because they’re juggling their lives, and 20-plus other businesses that are on their list of to-dos.
Finding ways to reduce the friction, and make it really easy. We call it guided service. To guide them through the things that they need right when they need it.
Casey Murray
Good. Eric, let’s come to you to sort of have a proof point of, when this is done well, what would be a good example of someone who’s leveraged that improved decisioning, that speed that makes a better experience, and what are some of the ways that people could expect, or results that they could expect if they were able to leverage a solution like Zoot?
Eric Hathaway
Yeah, I think that as the industry has become more and more competitive, and as both of you touched on in developing that trust with the customer in that micro-moment, I don’t think it’s just about the micro-moment. It’s about really developing trust with that client very quickly. It’s about getting that product into their hand very quickly, then communicating the right kinds of information that they want very quickly as well, and at relevant times.
I think, in the onboarding process, we’ve seen … and there’s great examples in the market of companies that are doing it very well, and they have basically, some of the larger banks, even in today’s market, interesting enough, are still taking market share, because those are the ones that are taking the time and the energy to invest in these resources, to enhance that customer experience, enhance that customer journey. Although it’s been a relatively slow moving industry, it is starting to move very quickly. I think fintechs have come along and moved that bar a little bit.
Some of the big players are now really taking steps to do that. There’s some serious enhancement in the market, and I think as the competitiveness continues, we’re going to see more of these models come to fruition. I think it’s really about the different types of vendors that you bring in, and the way that you layer these in the customer journey. That’s what’s going to be the most important, is how is it layered? Many of these companies might try to shove additional projects, and that cross-sell opportunity is huge, obviously, but again, as Brie mentioned earlier, you have to get them the right information at the right time, and what’s relevant to them. I love the point she made earlier that we all feel like that customer’s focused on our product, and they’re really not. It’s not different than the Amazons of the world, where very little human interaction, but high trust in a platform that gets something in their hands as quickly as possible.
That’s what I think we’re going to see in the financial institution, is going to be that sort of model. How quickly can we get it there? How can we communicate with them the information that they want, so that then we have that customer stickiness, I guess, and the ability to then have them continue to expand their product line within?
Brie Tascione
I just want to jump in there, because Eric, you touched on something that raised a great point, that speed to market is so important. Customer expectations are changing so rapidly that what tends to happen is companies will say, “Okay, we need to take on this big customer experience improvement project,” and it takes them 24 months to bring it from idea to reality. By the time they get it out there, customer expectations have already changed again. We’re constantly in this game of catch-up where customers are two steps ahead of us at all times. It’s going to be really imperative for businesses moving forward to find solutions that they can get to market quickly, learn from, and optimize over time. If we wait for these large waterfall projects to happen, we’re going to be behind every time.
What Relay is doing with a lot of our clients is providing them with a really easy turnkey solution that helps them get these dynamic mobile web experiences out to their customers at scale, and they can get up and live within 30 to 60 days, which is a dramatic change over the alternative, which would be building or developing apps that can take months if not years to get fully up and running with no guarantee of adoption.
Eric Hathaway
Absolutely. That’s an excellent point, too, Brie. That time to market is so key in today’s current environment.
Casey Murray
Eric, when you’re looking at companies evaluating the fintech landscape, there’s always a cost-benefit analysis, they’re going to have to spend to get something. You’ve got, as a personal insider, as Zoot should, on how the buy versus build could play out. Are we going to try to manage this brute force on a spreadsheet, or can we turn this over and sort of stay focused on our core expertise?
Again, to some of that tradeoff and coaching, but when you see it done well, are there results that you can predict, or has it been transformative for any clients that have been able to jump in and leverage a service like yours to get things going faster? What are some of the positives that people could expect if they decided to make that effort?
Eric Hathaway
Absolutely. I think one of the interesting sides of the equation to your question, and I’m going to branch a little bit. I can’t talk about specific clients, but one of the things that we are seeing is a real trend towards the fintech model, the partnership with the institution. It’s happening either in partnerships or acquisitions, but it’s really about the financial institutions, I think, are realizing that their core business is their products, whether it be banking, whether it be card, et cetera. I think they’re realizing that as information is growing so quickly, as these mass data pools are out there, as we have to analyze those data pools and pull information from them, the fintech arena is very focused and they have that rapid ability to change direction or revamp their models to current environments.
I think the institutions we’re seeing a real trend towards … Again, that cost-benefit analysis, there were a lot of them really trying to fight and do it internally, but I think there’s really a trend now towards that push to use many of those fintechs to bring the data sources in, analyze the data, decision on the data. We’re seeing a real uptick, not only on the financial industry itself, being banks, but also in financial portions of other business, so retailers, merchant onboarders, and a lot of these companies, in their decisioning process for their financial products, are starting to use those fintechs for that reason. I think we’re seeing a trend towards that less so than that internal development.
Casey Murray
Specifically, you shared with me, I’m somewhat familiar on how they can test different scenarios. That’s a really powerful use of the data that people might not be thinking about, other than just sort of, “Oh, it’s decisioning.” Share, for a second if you could, something that someone might learn about the power of testing scenarios.
Eric Hathaway
That’s a great point, Casey. That’s one of the things that we offer, is that ability to test different dynamics. As an example, I mentioned earlier three to 500 different data points, one of those might be credit score. Let’s say an institution currently has a model that at a 740 credit score, we’re going to offer them this card, or open this type of account. In the past, if they’ve wanted to change that model and move that score down 10 points, the propensity for more fraudulent activity or less payback, future debts, and write offs, they would have to test that out manually, and it could take six months, eight months, a year and a half, to really get information back.
Now, with a decisioning engine like what we provide, with all of that data, they have the ability to test that model, and they can test it within a day, and actually implement it the next day. It can happen in … again, let’s talk about micro-moment, but days or weeks instead of months and years. That’s a really powerful dynamic of using some of these tools to be able to test different models to see how it affects the rest of your organization, or the bottom line.
Casey Murray
Yeah, and could lead to competitive benefit for people that are doing that. That’s exciting. Brie, is there an impact? Is the climb worth the effort in terms of trying to improve some of the customer engagement interactions that you see after the acquisition, and do you have any examples that you would share?
Brie Tascione
Yeah. We had a great example with our client, Citizens Bank. Citizens was looking in their student loan division, ways to streamline the application process for their student loan applicants, so they could increase pull through and decrease time to completion, so everything going back to our earlier tenets of speed, context, and ease. Citizens was noticing a lot of drop off in their application process. The moment that a student applies for a student loan online, there are a series of back and fourths that needs to happen in order to bring that application to completion. The bank was relying primarily on outbound calls, and direct mail, and email to communicate with those students, but the problem was students aren’t reading email, they might not be living at their home address anymore, and they’re certainly not picking up the phone.
Citizens was really struggling with, “How do we engage these applicants? We have people that are indicating interest. We have them at our front door. We can’t pull them through.” If they couldn’t pull them through quickly enough, then it just opens the door for competitive offers to swoop in and grab that prospect. We worked with them to establish that digital connection with the applicants. The moment that they submit the application online, we send them a text message that invites them to this dedicated web based service channel, and from there on in, the bank could deliver these real time messages, times to points along that journey, those micro-moments, to let the applicant know when there were critical next steps that they had to take action on, like selecting rates and terms, or adding a cosigner, or when information was missing from their application.
These are things that were happening all the time for Citizens. They didn’t have an effective way to address them. With our solution in place, delivering information in a way, and in the context that the applicant, the student, really responded to, they saw an increase in their overall pull throughs, or number of completions, by 10%, but they also reduced the time to completion by 40%, which allowed the bank to recognize revenue that much faster and reduce the chances that competitive offers could come and steal that customer away.
It’s just one example of how so many areas of friction in the customer experience can be addressed through better communications.
Casey Murray
When someone looked at doing that themselves, or going outside into Eric’s point of staying core in what people are good at. If they’re thinking through that, what are some queues that you might give them to say, “Yeah, you’re well positioned to do that,” or, “No, you’d be better served taking the outside prebuilt solutions. In some ways almost outsourcing, but staying focused on what they know best”?
Brie Tascione
Yeah, I think it comes down to how urgent is this need for the business? Is this a critical area in the business that needs to be addressed? The fact that banks should be evaluating, is this their core expertise? Is this an area that they want to have to fully manage? There’s a lot more involved than simply sending communications. There’s the consent capture and management aspect of things. You need to be able to capture a customer’s mobile number, verify that mobile number, capture the appropriate consent to be able to send messages to that customer, and then manage the consent status over time. You need to be able to craft and deliver these dynamic mobile experiences on a channel that’s PCI compliant and secure, be able to optimize those over time.
It’s more complex and sophisticated than simply sending a mobile message. There’s a lot more intelligence that’s happening behind the scenes, that can give a bank confidence that they are doing this in a secure and compliant way while delivering a great experience. Using Citizens, again, as an example, they were approaching their peak season as a business, they were about 60 days away from peak application season. Their directive to us was, “We need a solution live by the time this season begins.” We effectively had 45 days to get this program up and running, and we were able to hit that timeline. For Citizens it was a major win that impacted their fiscal year.
Casey Murray
Yep, another component of speed.
Eric Hathaway
I’m going to interrupt just quickly, Casey. Sorry to stop you there.
Casey Murray
Please. Yep.
Eric Hathaway
Brie brought up a very important point that I think is sometimes overlooked and maybe not talked about. That is compliance. I think that many of these institutions, although their compliance departments are huge, when they branch into some of these new areas of technology, that compliance aspect is something that they have to pay attention to, they’ve got to look at, and they’ve got to add potential resources to. Going with a vendor that has been around for a while, understands that compliance necessity, we have a compliance department internally here to make sure that we are following compliance regulations nationally, globally with the associations that are relevant, and therefore those institutions don’t have to then add even that cost on.
I think it’s an important point that Brie brings up, that compliance is huge. That’s one of those things that, as a good vendor, you will address before you walk in the door.
Casey Murray
Yeah, absolutely, and a good segue to try to wrap this up for folks, to just recap what we’ve learned. These final points, I think, are just great examples of leveraging the experts. You know, let the experts stay focused on the regulations, and the compliance, or the nuances of new data sources in a decisioning process, and stay focused on what you know, which is hopefully how to serve your customers, and sell your products, or upsell and cross-sell, and use these other tools, if you will, as accelerators to either project timeline or profitability. If you do have a goal of trying to get something out the door quickly, yes, you could probably try to build or brute force some of these types of things, but is that your core? Is that what you’re built to do? You’re better at selling products and knowing what the market needs, and stay focused on that.
As we sort of bring the discussion to a close, I just wanted to go back to the original theory of, “What is the power of the micro-moment in terms of winning customer loyalty? If you’re thinking about doing that, are you equipped to do that yourself? When should you go to an outside commercial partner product?” Hopefully you heard some thoughts today that’ll give you maybe a decision tree to realize where you are on a maturity curve of, “Yes, we’re in dire need of help,” or, “Ah, we’re pretty mature. Maybe we can do it.” In either case, do the homework, and go out and see what’s there, and then make that cost-benefit analysis of, “Is this worth us doing ourselves, or would we get there faster?”
As we look at micro-moments, I think you hopefully understood, these aren’t negotiable or optional anymore that you take care of them. They’re happening every day. Customers’ expectations for customer service are set by the last best interaction that they’ve had with some other brand somewhere. If someone did it that way, anyone else now who doesn’t do it that way or as quickly is behind in their mind. That’s not where we want you to be as potential partners, or service providers out there, too. Knowing that this is a bit of an arms race, and it is competitive to try to get out there to be ahead, hopefully you heard today from two different technologies, but related, that when you’re acquiring and when you’re onboarding, you’ve got some partners willing to try to help you distinguish yourself and your brand, and hopefully delight your customers, which is what everyone’s end goal is, too.
With that said, thank you for your time today. We hopefully gave you some stuff to think about. I hope it was educational. I very much appreciate you giving us the time, and I look forward to speaking with you again down the road. Thanks.
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