MarTechTalk: The martech transformation in financial services – improving the customer journey

On 24 September, MarTech Talk host Kevin Craine was joined by Nikola Maricic, Marketing Director APAC, Ria Money Transfer; and Greg Armshaw, Senior Director, Strategy - APAC, Brightcove.

Views on news

The CX50 2024 is the sixth instalment in what is now the preeminent list of the UK’s top customer experience professionals. The companies in the list are characterised by continuously improving digital interfaces, simplifying customer interactions and using data analytics to deliver more personalised experiences. Although advertising still has an important role to play, thanks to wide choices that can overwhelm customers, brands need to become “their own Wiki” and improve search to reach better conversion rates. It’s key to success that all company functions are on the same page and are guided by a shared vision. Omnichannel shouldn’t just be a customer-facing methodology but should prevail across the organisation too. Brands may consider educating their customers about the choice they have to interact with the brand via both digital and physical channels in a unified experience. 

Communicating complexities along the customer journey

Brands need to tailor their content to the channel where they communicate with their customers. A loger video may work on a product page but on social media, the attention of the potential customer must be grabbed in about 7 seconds. There are also tools now that can prepare versions of the same content in different lengths and style.  In the financial sector, it’s especially important that customers get help when they get stuck at various touchpoint, e.g., KYC. While in retail, session time is a key metric and the longer you keep the customer’s attention, the better, in finance, time should be reduced to as little as possible.

AI is still on the cusp of what it can potentially achieve, but from a customer experience perspective, the right mix of technology and the human touch must be struck – also in order to tackle false positives. That said, AI is already saving a lot of money by automating content creation and translations. Translation tools work the best across languages that use the Latin script. Across different scripts, where translations don’t work so seamlessly, video can be especially useful. Video is already very popular in the US, and the use of AI will probably result in other markets adopting it too. Explainer-based videos work in Asia, but not necessarily in Australia or New Zealand. Data protection and privacy regulations may set back the trend of personalisation as they become more stringent. (e.g., Apple’s 14.5 release).

The panel’s advice

• Targeting the right message to the right person at the right time, as well as retargeting will reduce acquisition costs.
• As AI’s coding capabilities are improving, the speed of creating new services will accelerate and costs will drop.