Customer loyalty is critical for banks, credit unions and financial institutions. Today, where consumers have many choices, exceptional customer experience (CX) is crucial for success. Historically, metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) have been widely used and provide valuable insights. However, they have limitations in predicting customer behavior and capturing the full customer experience.
A new initiative may be the answer marketers are looking for: the Global CX Standards. Developed through a collaboration between Bain & Company, Kantar and Qualtrics, these standards address organizations’ challenges in measuring and managing CX effectively.
“We see the Global CX Standards as accelerators to firms who embrace the opportunities outlined within them,” Stanford Swinton, principal author of the standards and executive vice president Bain & Company, and Peter Aitken, senior director and head of customer strategy and insights at Kantar told The Financial Brand.
The standards’ authors believe that establishing a universal benchmark for CX excellence across industries can empower CX professionals and ultimately improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Here’s a closer look.
Three Key Pillars of the Global CX Standards
The Global CX standards are built on three foundational pillars: culture, capability and execution.
The first pillar, Customer-Centric Culture, emphasizes aligning company values to improve customer’s lives. “Culture change needs to be led from the top,” Swinton and Aitken emphasize. Leadership engagement and positive employee experiences are highlighted as critical, with the customer at the center of daily operations.
The second pillar, Customer Experience Capability, focuses on how brands can use various methods, including advanced analytics and AI, to gather, analyze and act on customer feedback. The information should be available across teams, with a single customer view created to personalize interactions and achieve business goals.
The third pillar, Customer Experience Execution, highlights the need to implement a customer-centric approach throughout the entire customer lifecycle. It includes using customer data and insights to personalize interactions, designing customer journeys with user needs in mind and organizing teams and resources to manage them while delivering exceptional experiences.
These pillars provide a comprehensive framework for organizations and emphasize a holistic, customer-centric approach. However, the true impact of the Standards will depend on how well they are adopted and implemented by organizations.
Feedback and Insights Shaping the Final CX Standards
Since the draft Global CX Standards was released, industry professionals have actively engaged, with feedback coming in from various sectors. The overwhelmingly positive response shows a consensus on the need for a better CX framework.
“Overall, we saw broad agreement with the standards, which was probably the biggest insight in itself,” Swinton and Aitken say. “There’s been a recognition that effectively drafting standards for all these areas would be very difficult for a single organization. And so there has been really positive commentary on the efforts of three separate companies to join up to develop this.”
According to Swinton and Aitken, the feedback process has also shed light on key areas of interest and emerging trends in the CX landscape:
Generative AI: Integrating AI and machine learning into CX strategies is a topic of significant interest, reflecting the broader debates about these technologies’ potential.
Leadership: The critical role of leadership in driving customer experience. It shows the need for CX to be a top-down priority, with leaders actively creating a customer-centric culture and embedding it into an organization’s DNA.
“Essentially, the leaders who have used the Standards are able to take an increasingly strategic approach to influencing the organization.”
— Stanford Swinton and Peter Aitken
Swinton and Aitken report that early adopters have noted that the standards have facilitated more conversations and strategic approaches to CX.
“The emerging insight from many is how the Standards are enabling conversations and activities to happen across their organizations at large, not just within the narrower walls of the traditional CX function,” they say. “Essentially, the leaders who have used the Standards are able to take an increasingly strategic approach to influencing the organization.”
Feedback and early adoption experiences will help shape the final version of the standards. The goal is to ensure that the Standards remain relevant and impactful while addressing the evolving challenges of CX measurement and management. “We have been delighted with the levels of engagement during the consultation period as well as with the variety of feedback and encouraging support for this approach,” Swinton and Aitken say.
Implications and Opportunities for the Financial Industry
The global CX standards highlight an opportunity for banks and financial institutions to elevate their customer experience practices and gain a competitive edge in an increasingly demanding market. Adoption of these standards as best practices could help banks, credit unions and other financial institutions create a more customer-centric approach, enhance their overall experience and establish a key differentiator in the industry.
“Competition is already forcing financial service companies to innovate for customers and the Standards can help firms ensure that customer-centricity enters the DNA of the organization rather than stands alone as a project or one-off initiative,” Swinton and Aitken say.
The Standards offer a framework for both embracing best practices and encouraging experimentation. “In developing the Standards, we certainly felt that some would be recognized as best practices, while others would be more challenging for many organizations,” the authors say. “For example, ‘there are live, visible reporting dashboards to track customer feedback.’ This is probably not a surprise for most and we see most financial services organizations addressing this in some way.”
However, they also may challenge some more traditional financial institutions to experiment with innovation and embrace new technology. “Other Standards refer to organizational approaches that might be more recognizable to fintech and challengers. For example, organizing teams around customer journeys, taking personalized actions for each customer, or using AI and machine learning to improve the way humans interact with customers.”
The Global CX Standards may present an opportunity for the financial industry to move beyond traditional metrics like NPS and adopt a more holistic approach to CX measurement and management. Customer expectations are constantly evolving, the financial institutions that prioritize the customer experience and align their efforts towards that goal can help build long-term customer loyalty and growth.
The draft Standards are currently in a feedback period until August 31, 2024. The final version is set to launch on October 1, 2024, CX Day.
Liz Froment is a financial services writer based in Boston. She specializes in banking, lending and wealth management with an interest in technology. Her work has appeared in Business Insider and The Motley Fool, among others.