The Chief Experience Officer plays a crucial role in response to the COVID-19 crisis

Experience Officers have a leading role in supporting the financial services business and retail members/customers by leading the shift to the future. It is clear; we are now living in a much more digital world in part due to the COVID-19 crisis. Online/mobile use has increased significantly as people have been staying home, working from home, and doing most financial services online.

Online/mobile banking is becoming standard behavior. Members/customers are now relying on products and services to be available to them in a whole new way…24/7.

Experience Officers are tracking the future needs for online digital services. The online and growing digital reality presents a unique challenge in helping the financial services navigate the current crisis and drive digital transformation strategies to a future road map for better member experiences. The disruption from the coronavirus puts immense pressure on the Experience Officer as they manage this situation with ever-evolving technology and experience challenges. The once mapped

digital strategy in one-to-three years must now scale in a matter of days or weeks. Leaders need to identify and learn quickly to address the ever-changing landscape.

Four dimensions need to be addressed for success

• Engage the member now and prepare for the next normal
• Scale the use of agile, tools, and platforms for accelerated digital delivery
• Re-craft the digital strategy, engage data insights, and re-balance the experience road map
• Rethink budgets and prioritize initiatives that generate leads, personalize the experience, and generate share of the wallet

Engage the Member

Deliver content based on voice-of-the-member and ensure the member is at the heart of everything you deliver. In the current state, that means having a clear picture of how member behaviors and needs are evolving, which behaviors will be long-term, and which are likely to be short-lived habits. It is important to remember that how members/customers are motivated to behave today does not determine future paths. As financial services test new channels of communication, new offers to drive action, and look for ways to build loyalty and motivate their members/customers in a positive way.

Communications with surveys, educational resources, online tools, and detailed analytic insights of member behaviors need to be a part of the “reset” strategy. The insights from surveys, interactions, and member data should drive priorities in re-crafting the product, technology, and experience roadmap for development.

Ensure transparency through the online operation, address COVID-19 financial related concerns through cohesive messages, increase cybersecurity, add new tech-enabled models, and condense multiple communication streams to more personalized member experience.

Use multiple sources of member data to access unmet needs in a weekly or at minimum a monthly basis and then respond to the member needs with content to help resolve their unmet financial needs. Coming out of the crisis, financial services must answer important questions about scalability and timing. Three factors will be at the forefront: the ability to use data to drive-hyper personalization, the creation/curation of content, and the ability to promote value to the member/customer experience.

Scale agile, tools and platforms to accelerate delivery

Most challenging is balancing the response plans between immediate preparedness for communicating with members/customers and planning for the next normal. Accelerating beyond what had been the normal; going from years to now weeks or months. Moving to a weekly or faster pace will require a shared test and learn process, and reallocated digital resources. Accelerating to a faster frequency will need to resize potential shifts in financial trends, evaluate leads to opportunities to drive revenue, and reallocate expenditures to new digital tools that drive member engagement.
Agile is a well-established model for businesses to work quickly and efficiently while still anticipating and preparing for the new normal by staying focused on members/customers to support their financial goals. The tools and experiences come from doing, learning, and trying something new. To get ahead accelerate the member experience in a time of crisis by modernizing your digital communication delivery. Increase productivity with flexible digital-solution platforms and technology. By evaluating, defining, and mapping a well thought out agile plan, the challenges an Experience Officer is facing today demonstrate leadership and a clear view of how digital, tools, and technology can navigate the crisis.

Experience Officers can do more than help financial services to survive, but also be ready for the next normal.

Recraft the digital strategy

With much uncertainty, it’s more important than ever to stay ahead with data insights and member experiences that drive engagement and leads. During the early recovery period with partial reopening, financial services leadership will face fundamental challenges. First is that member behaviors have changed and the patterns for using financial services have changed significantly.
With the rise of the contact-free
economy, people feel more comfortable with online financial services, thus leading to less branch face-to-face interaction.
This though good for overhead and real estate costs will lead to member relationships degrading. In order to mitigate such churn, finding ways to recraft your digital strategy as a trusted and needed financial partner will become more critical.

Refocus the digital efforts to better reflect member expectations for their experience. Rethink the member journey from welcome, to onboarding, throughout life events that happen to everyone.
During moments of crisis or important messaging must be communicated quickly. Every member lives with savings, bill pay, auto loan, vacations, marriage, home ownership, retirement, and much more financially. This means establishing new digital models to handle servicing your members/customers life events and goals.

Incorporate data to manage better experiences with real-time decision-making and personal content delivery. This involves using and creating new data sets for segmentation, geographic delivery, and retargeting. Data-driven strategies is the way of providing a hyper-personalized member experience that they are expecting from every brand they are associated with.

Rethink budgets and prioritize the members/customers

The best Chief Experience Officers are keeping a close eye on what generates value for the financial services. Thinking about how to invest in those initiatives to help the financial services weather the downturn and come through it in a stronger position with its membership will require rethinking budget and prioritizing how to communicate in the most efficient manner possible.

Rather than just pounding a member with multiple emails to get various messages across, use one email that drives a member to a personal webpage that has relevant and curated content tai- lored to them. Curating content for a personal webpage that is dynamically built to present to different segments is a far more efficient way to communicate with your members/customers and not risk over-communication fatigue.

Given the intensity of these many pressures, it’s reasonable to search for new, more efficient, and cost-saving delivery platforms for marketing and brand communications.

If necessity is the mother of invention, financial services still have the imperative to communicate with their members/customers. In this sense, many are learning new ways to connect: just like the story of the grandparents who have now learned to Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime. Chief Experience Officers now have a better sense of what can and cannot be done within their internal departments.

Chief Experience Officers will come to appreciate the speed other companies’ technology and platforms have charted their paths to the next normal through digital transformation.