Personalisation stands as the cornerstone of differentiation for banks striving to foster long-term relationships with their customers. In the rapidly evolving financial sector, personalisation lends muscle in fending off challenges from both traditional competitors and disruptive fintech players.
This entails delivering tailored experiences seamlessly across touchpoints, whether traditional brick-and-mortar branches, digital platforms, or face-to-face interactions. The shift from segment-based offerings to personalised experiences fundamentally alters the dynamics of customer relationships, placing the individual’s needs and preferences at the forefront of every interaction.
Inspired by their interactions with consumer-centric giants like Amazon and Netflix, customers today expect banks to anticipate their needs and provide recommendations proactively.
As the banking sector operates within a complex ecosystem characterised by diverse customer demographics and financial needs, and evolving regulatory frameworks, this paradigm shift in customer expectations necessitates banks to reinvent themselves, leveraging advanced technologies and data-driven insights to orchestrate personalised experiences at scale.
This, in turn, calls for investment in building robust data ecosystems and other technological infrastructure capable of harnessing customer insights effectively. Hence, a ‘personalisation engine’ becomes indispensable in this scheme of things.
The key features of this personalisation engine include:
Comprehensive customer data — Banks must aggregate and analyse vast datasets encompassing demographic information, transaction histories, browsing behaviours, and preferences for a nuanced understanding of each customer.
Advanced analytics and machine learning — Actionable insights derived from customer data by machine learning algorithms can enable banks to identify patterns, anticipate needs, and tailor offerings with precision, thereby enhancing relevance and engagement.
Omni-channel capabilities — Today’s customers expect seamless experiences across traditional branches, digital platforms, and mobile devices. A best-in-class personalisation engine should facilitate omni-channel communication to deliver personalised messages and recommendations across all touchpoints.
Real-time decision making — To be able to deliver timely and relevant experiences, banks must invest in technologies that help analyse data in real-time, and adapt personalisation strategies dynamically to meet evolving customer needs.
Privacy and security — Given the rising concerns around data privacy, banks must prioritise the protection of customer information. Building robust security protocols and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements are paramount to instilling trust and confidence in customers.
Feedback loop
The successful operation of this personalisation engine calls for scalability and flexibility to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving market, accommodate future growth, and integrate new innovations to meet evolving customer demands; integration with existing systems to maximise efficiency and minimise disruption during implementation; continuous monitoring and optimisation through feedback loops and performance metrics to help refine the personalisation efforts based on customer responses and data insights; cross-functional collaboration across departments, including marketing, IT, data analytics, and customer service, to ensure all stakeholders work towards a shared vision of customer-centric excellence; and a design focusing on simplicity, usability, and relevance to enhance the overall customer experience.
A best-in-class personalisation engine that leverages advanced technologies, data-driven insights, and customer-centric design principles can help banks unlock new opportunities for growth, deepen customer relationships, and drive sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly digitised world.
Embracing personalisation isn’t just a strategy but also a commitment to redefining the future of banking, one personalised interaction at a time.
(The writer is President and Head-Business Intelligence Unit, Axis Bank)