The Importance of Consistent Messaging Throughout the Customer Experience
We often hear about the importance of consistency in business. Whether you work in the kitchen of a restaurant and have to make sure every serving of a dish is exactly the same, or you run a hotel and want every guest to have a comparable experience, consistency is the key to satisfied customers and repeat business.
The same is true of the financial services industry. Whether a bank or investment firm, you need to make sure all your customers and clients receive the same key messaging throughout their journey with your organization.
"Investors appreciate companies that can clearly and consistently explain the companies’ value proposition and the external and competitive forces that its businesses face,” says McKinsey. "McKinsey research shows that consistent, clear, and transparent messaging is essential for companies to maintain and enhance credibility with shareholders.”
A Multichannel Industry
The biggest challenge with messaging consistency in the modern financial business is the fact that there are so many channels through which customers can engage with firms. Social media, AI powered chatbots, smartphone apps, call centers, and good old fashioned face-to-face interactions means ensuring consistency across the customer experience can be more difficult than ever.
However, customers are still demanding multiple ways of engaging with financial institutions. For example, according to research by McKinsey, a quarter of customers say they still want to use a physical bank branch for more important financial interactions – such as discussing new accounts or mortgages – even though they prefer digital channels for more everyday interactions, such as paying bills or transferring funds.
So, how do you make sure that, however a customer chooses to interact with your firm, they receive consistent messaging and a comparable experience? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, it all starts with how you train and maintain your staff.
Human Resources
Whether your staff are working in one of your branches, on the social media team, or operating your contact center, you need to ensure they all receive the same training and development when it comes to interacting with customers.
Customers today do not expect to be passed around various channels. If they get in touch on social media, they expect a response through social media; if they call your contact center, they don’t expect to then be referred to a physical branch, etc. This means your staff across the board need to be fully informed on your business policies and procedures and make sure they have the skills to communicate them clearly and effectively to customers.
For example, it’s no good for someone to receive one answer to their question on Twitter, and then receive a completely different response from a teller in one of your physical branches. Not only will this leave your customers confused and potentially anxious about their finances, but will harm the reputation of your brand and could lead to customers looking elsewhere for financial services – after all, who wants to trust their money to an organization which can’t even agree on what its own policies are?
A Word on AI
With the popularity and proliferation of advanced AI chatbot platform ChatGPT – the platform has recently smashed a world record by reaching one million users in just five days – the use of artificial intelligence to interact with customers is once again very much a hot topic in conversations around customer service.
Obviously, the use of AI in customer service interactions poses significant challenges for messaging consistency. For example, how do you ensure the AI is responding to customers in the same manner as a human operator would and vice versa. If you are going to hand any of your customer experience over to AI technology, you need to ensure the software is properly configured to only operate within restrictive guidelines.
In fact, it will often be more sensible to only have AI field very general customer service enquiries – in line with what you might expect from a FAQ document – and immediately pass anything more complex on to a human operator. This way you can leverage AI to relieve some call pressure from other channels and leave them free to deal with more complex queries, and make sure the software isn’t going rogue and destroying messaging consistency.
Final Thoughts
Messaging consistency throughout the customer experience has never been more difficult to maintain. This is thanks mainly to the ever expanding number of channels through which people can now get in touch with brands. However, by ensuring staff are properly and consistently trained and developed in policy and practice, and making sure AI is deployed sparingly, financial services companies can keep messaging as consistent as possible.
Consistent messaging throughout the customer experience is sure to be part of the conversation at CXFS 2023, being held in July and August at The Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.