JP Morgan is Embedding Payments and Treasury in Its D2C Customer Experience Strategy
When thinking about customer experience, we can often get bogged down with facets of it such as interacting directly with them, such as when trying to resolve customer service-related issues.
However, it’s important to remember that customer experience runs through the entirety of your operation and permeates every single touchpoint through which the people who use your product or service interact with your brand.
This means it’s important to seek opportunities to supercharge customer experience in every corner of your business and try to find ways to make sure, no matter which method they are using, or their reason for interacting with your financial institution, the experience is seamless, streamlined, and perhaps most importantly, consistent.
JP Morgan
As part of its ongoing strategy, financial giant, JP Morgan has been looking for ways to bring payments and treasury together to create a superior customer experience for its D2C customers.
The D2C [direct to consumer] model sees major retailers and consumer packaged goods brands selling their merchandise directly to customers instead of going through a distributer or high street retailer. By cutting out the middlemen in this way the makers and wholesalers of products are able to offer more competitive process to customers, while simultaneously improving their own profit margins.
However, adopting this business model also brings with it certain challenges and requires them to have a modern and agile treasury and payments infrastructure backing them up.
"What we start to see is these go-to-market strategies taking place at an organization level but bringing treasury in to have the conversations to help with the end-to-end process flow," said Managing Director, Head Payments Product & Solutions for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Sara Castelhano. "And organizations that aren't bringing treasury to the table at those conversations or those that end up having delays in the longer run. So having treasury as a seat at the table is so important when you go on this journey because connecting to a consumer is a completely different operating model than treasury is used to using today."
This means payments become a key component of the customer experience when operating under the D2C model and need the financial brands they choose to do business with to understand that. JP Morgan is therefore making sure its end-to-end payments processes are tailored to the customer journey and designed to enhance these kinds of digital-first business models.
Payments and Treasury
JP Morgan’s strategy for improving the payments and treasury experience involves embedding the processes into customers’ everyday tasks and is built around three key components.
Combatting so-called app fatigue by consolidating niche tasks and bringing them together within the payments wallet, keeping payments in context through digital technology such as voice control, social commerce, and Internet of Things functionality, and using advanced payments data and analytics to help customers identify and perfect their D2C business models.
"I think most people are already familiar with things like the huge change in direct-to-consumer, where corporations who were previously further down in the consumer supply chain are looking for opportunities to reach those consumers directly," said Global Head of Core Trade, J.P. Morgan Wholesale Payments, Natasha Condon. "Like almost everything in the 21st century, it’s driven by the internet."
Pivoting to alternative business models such as D2C is going to become increasingly common as we move through 2022 and beyond. More than 60% of JP Morgan clients globally cited business model pivots as the driver for their priorities. This means payments and treasury providers are going to become ever more deeply ingrained in the financial customer experience of these companies and need to have the resources and strategies in place to best meet their wants and needs.
"The development of new business models is both the greatest opportunity and the most complex challenge facing treasury and payments teams right now," said JP Morgan. "Strategic treasury leaders are helping to deliver greater agility into new markets and pivoting to digital-first business models – embedded payments, contextual commerce, recurring revenue, direct-to-consumer, platform models, and super-apps. But a successful strategy needs bold thinking and the right partners to navigate this constantly changing landscape."
Final Thoughts
Customer experience in the world of D2C means having payments and treasury on board to facilitate these new financial interactions between producers and customers – without the traditional bulwark of the go-between retailer to handle much of the heavy lifting in this regard.
Financial services providers need to make sure payments and treasury are aligned with customer experience to make this process as streamlined and effective as possible.
You can hear JP Morgan Vice President of Digital Strategy, Mitch Rose speak at CXFS 2022, being held in July at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.