6 steps to the ultimate CXThe essential guide to optimizing customer

communications for financial services organizations

B R O C H U R E

Banks won’t cease to exist, but the banking experience of today will.Brett King, FinTech Guru

Table of contentsIntroduction ................................................................................... 4

Step 1: Clean up your communications inventories ........................ 6

Step 2: Be vigilant about using plain language ............................. 8

Step 3: Adopt the “3 C’s”: consistency, collaboration, and compliance .............................................................................10

Step 4: Ensure your communications are content-centric ...............14

Step 5: Empower your marketers and reduce reliance on IT ........16

Step 6: Invest in personalization ...................................................17

IntroductionImproving the customer experience (CX) is the driving force in financial services

today. It’s the key to customer retention and successful cross-selling, which are both

critical to increasing revenues. But achieving that ultimate goal of a seamless

experience still presents significant challenges due to how most banks manage

their customer communications.

Marketing campaigns for various products and servicing communications are usually

undertaken by different teams and departments within a bank. While each of these

communications may have merit on their own, the customer sees a disjointed

stream of communications and messages.

All too often, each communication ends up looking and feeling like it’s coming

from a different banking organization—or worse, doesn’t acknowledge the customer

engagement that’s already taken place.

Today’s customers expect more—they want to know their bank has a unified view of

all their transactions. Disjointed marketing efforts and communications risk leaving

your customers with the impression that their bank is interested in selling them a lot

of products, but not interested in understanding their actual needs.

Taking a different view

The most effective way to avoid this risk is to make an organizational effort to

move from an inside-out to an outside-in point of view when communicating

with customers.

The outside-in approach views every communication from the customer’s

perspective; it uses the data your bank has to gain an understanding of what

the customer’s needs are, and it communicates those needs in a way that’s

consistent in brand and tone across all touchpoints.

The result? That seamless customer experience every financial institution is

looking for. Companies that behave like they’re in the “customer experience”

business—i.e. those focused on how they communicate and

service customers—are the ones winning new business.

So how can you get to an outside-in approach to communications to

achieve the resulting CX your customers want?

In the chapters ahead, we’ll explore the six essential steps financial services

organizations need to take to prepare for the communications experience

of tomorrow.

“Customers are three to four times more likely to say they trust brands that communicate clearly. And when customers trust a brand, they prefer it to other brands. In contrast, when companies do not communicate clearly, customers perceive the brand to be deceptive or unethical— as literally trying to cheat them.”– Read My Lips: Clear Communication Can Mean Billions in Revenue, Forrester

Step 1

Clean up your communications inventories.The path to achieving and maintaining the desired CX through better

communications starts with cleaning up content and communications inventories.

Revitalizing communications by replacing unnecessary jargon and unclear or

inconsistent messages with clear, concise language is guaranteed to move the

needle in the right CX direction. The ability to build loyalty, add value, and enhance

the experience of customers in new and more profitable ways is heavily reliant on

ensuring consistency across communications, and you can’t do this if teams are still

relying on varied messages and brand interpretations.

So where do you start?

The goal of cleaning your inventory is to understand the content that exists, and to

identify an intelligent way to organize, standardize, and simplify it so that it sends a

clear message and supports a positive CX.

Performing this type of comprehensive assessment makes it possible to identify

duplicate content that’s spread across multiple communications—for example,

there may be certain paragraphs from cloned content that are largely the same in 50

different letters, with the only difference being items like the name of the state

or province, or the time in which the recipient is given to respond.

Through this identification process, the number of paragraphs that need to be

rewritten and standardized to better align with the brand or message might be

reduced to 20% of the unconsolidated content volume—making the task much

more manageable.

Assess your communications inventory in three easy steps

Engage cross-functional members who have the knowledge and access

necessary to address the many technical processes and business issues that

often arise when producing customer communications.

With their help, execute a communications assessment to provide a clear

picture of how your financial organization is presenting itself to customers. If

the inventory is larger than a couple of dozen pieces, consider leveraging an

AI-powered software solution built to handle these kinds of assessments.

This communications assessment will reveal the extent to which

inconsistencies exist in the communications that are being sent out. It will

also allow organizations to consolidate inventories to reduce the number of

messages that need to be managed and ensure consistency in both brand

positioning and messaging.

Identifying what content your organization needs, what can be eliminated, and

what needs to be rewritten to enhance message clarity or brand consistency will

go a long way toward improving the quality of your communications—as well as

the organization’s CX. However, this is a difficult step, as most organizations are

dealing with “content chaos”—an expansive and varied inventory of content that’s

impossible to manually comb through and clean up.

One way to tackle this challenge is by looking for intelligent software that

leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to automate this assessment and rationalization

effort. AI-powered content analysis can dramatically speed up the process of

finding duplicate content, similar content, and inconsistencies across your

communications inventories and enable you to scale your assessment beyond

what any human could reasonably perform. Solutions are available that evaluate

more complex dimensions of content including brand inconsistencies, reading

comprehension levels, and even sentiment to truly help you take your content to

the next level.

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Step 2

Be vigilant about using plain language.Recent research by Forrester examined the impact that clear communications had

on CX scores for organizations in several industries. It may come as no surprise

that the results showed that making customer communications clearer and easier

to read improved CX significantly. What was perhaps most surprising, though, was

how dramatic the CX improvements were—scores were increased by as much as 17

points per customer. Forrester concluded, “This outsized influence translates into

a revenue impact that can be a game-changer for your bottom line.” Research like

this strongly confirms the business case for carefully reviewing the communications

financial institutions send to their customers.

The power of plain language

Communications that use plain language and good information design principles

ensure that your customers understand information the first time they read it or hear

it, avoiding the misunderstandings and errors that result in calls to the call center—or

worse, customer churn.

It’s important to remember that no one technique defines plain language. Rather,

plain language is defined by answering this question: Is it is easy to read, understand,

and use?

Unfortunately for communications professionals in regulated industries, eliminating

legalese or jargon from all documents is easier said than done. Luckily, there

are a few basic principles for writing in plain language that your customers are

sure to comprehend.

In addition, reading comprehension level assessments can be a useful tool to

ensure that your communications aren’t overly complex. Look for communications

management solutions that embed the ability to assess reading comprehension

using the Flesch Reading Ease test or the Flesch-Kincaid reading test. Having this

assessment automatically performed is a great way to ensure it is never overlooked.

Plain language principles

Active voice

Identify who is doing what. Keep the subject in front of the verb.

Common words

Use simple, easy-to-understand words. Avoid jargon and slang.

Positive tone

Where possible, rewrite to avoid negative words such as don’t, not, and can’t.

Reader focus

Write for your reader. Guide them through the material using ‘you’.

Keep it short

Keep to one idea per sentence. Remove unnecessary words.

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Step 3

Adopt the “3 C’s”: consistency, collaboration, and compliance.Consistency

Most marketers understand the importance of consistency in communications, but

it’s not always easy to achieve—particularly when you consider the ever-growing

number of communications channels available to customers.

When you’re evaluating the consistency of your customer communications, ask

yourself: “What impression do our communications have on the customer? Do

they seem like they’re coming from the same company? Are we sending the same

message in printed communications as we are in digital?”

Achieving consistency across all channels of communication hits at the core of

the customer experience. Putting the necessary processes in place to ensure your

organization is reaching out to customers with a clear and consistent voice will

improve customer relationships across all touchpoints.

The adoption of communications management solutions that enable the centralized

management of content blocks and sharing of content helps greatly to ensure

consistency. Consider, for example, the ability to centrally manage and share out a

standard product description, a salutation, contact information, and other common

pieces of content.

By managing it in one place and sharing it out to multiple documents and

communications, you can ensure consistency and also streamline key processes

such as authoring or change management.

Collaboration

The next step is to assemble a team with stakeholders from all functional areas

in your organization that generate customer communications. Each of these

stakeholders are in the best position to understand their individual communications

workflow and challenges.

Making your communications goals visible by collaborating with other stakeholders

in your business is a key step toward ensuring continued consistency and

adherence to brand standards across your company.

Benefits of collaboration across business functions

Gives organizations the ability to define their core content

with a common voice.

Simplifies the task of migrating content from disparate locations

and departments to a centralized content library.

Reduces the chance for inconsistencies in communications

which can also reduce the potential for compliance issues

or customer misunderstandings.

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Compliance

The necessity of including regulatory content in communications puts additional

pressures on financial services organizations.

It can be time-consuming, complicated and costly to communicate with customers

and still meet compliance requirements—especially when deadlines often don’t

leave much wiggle room.

Whether it’s new state or federal legislation or ongoing mandated changes

required to stay in compliance with existing regulations, such as changes to cost of

borrowing disclosures, ability to respond to change is highly dependent on the level

of control and tools you have at your disposal.

Financial services organizations need to own and be able to manage content

throughout the touchpoint messaging lifecycle. When responding to fast-breaking

change with tight timelines, the ability for business users to edit, test and approve

content changes—without impacting IT—is paramount.

One approach organizations have taken to ease this challenge is leveraging

technology that enables the creation of a centralized repository of content that

feeds into dynamic templates for communications. This approach allows a business

user to centrally manage and update all required blocks of regulatory information.

When updates are made, these systems can then feed the updated content into all

of the communications and touchpoints that contain the content.

“For traditional retail banks, communicating clearly with their customers can raise CX Index scores by 17 points per customer, resulting in $561 million in incremental revenue.”– “Read My Lips: Clear Communication Can Mean Billions in Revenue,” Forrester

The capabilities you have at your disposal to manage content is critical, as they can

help or hinder your ability to respond to regulatory changes and to ensure your

content remains compliant.

Again, in this instance, having a communications management solution that

provides centralized management of content can provide an easy solution to

controlling, maintaining, and changing regulatory content. The best of these

systems will enable a business user to control available blocks of regulatory

content and push approved content out to dynamic documents that instantly

reflect the latest revision.

Step 4

Ensure your communications are content-centric.Over the past few years, there’s been a great deal of discussion around transforming

organizations of all shapes, sizes, and verticals to be truly customer-centric in

everything they do. This renewed effort has led to a considerable emphasis on

customer data and document design for creating relevant communications.

However, even when data and design projects are deemed successful, they’re

still not enough to achieve a positive impact on the customer experience. There’s

another approach that is integral to an effective communications strategy, and it’s

something we call “content centricity.”

“Content centricity” defined

We define content centricity as purposeful and focused attention on the actual

messaging within communications to ensure alignment with your customers’ needs.

Achieving true content centricity means putting your content first—not just as an

afterthought in your communications strategy.

In our view, content centricity is essential to achieving optimal customer

experiences, no matter the technologies available or new ways to engage the

customer. New channels can be added to meet the preferences of your customers—

and they can even be made responsive—but that won’t make a difference if you

aren’t paying attention to what you’re actually saying in those communications.

What’s more, the best communications tools on the market won’t help you achieve

your CX goals if you can’t get the right content into the right tool and manage it in

an effective way.

The reality is that content is one of the most powerful weapons your organization

has to impact the CX.

So what makes “good” content?

Audience: Know who you’re connecting with. Ensure content

leverages the right tone of voice and sentiment, at the right reading

comprehension level.

Format: What’s the desired content format your audience would like

to consume?

Timing: Reach your customers at the right time, when they need

you most.

Branding: Your brand is your differentiator, and it should be present

throughout your communications.

Relevance: Just because your organization wants to say it, doesn’t

mean your customers want to hear it. Ensure all content is relevant

to the individual.

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Step 5

Empower your marketers and reduce reliance on IT.Many marketers are reliant on IT to make even the simplest of edits and changes to

their customer communications that sit in composition and other communications

systems. These teams sometimes wait months for a change to be made—even a

small change, such as a phrase, a word, or even simple punctuation in a sentence.

The result is massive delays in getting communications out the door, and financial

content that remains static and unreadable.

But just imagine how different the customer experience would be if changes to

content—regulatory as well as discretionary—happened at the hands of marketers

in just a matter of minutes or hours instead of days or months? What if marketers

could abandon their spreadsheets that organize customer segments and

communications and instead had the power to work within a system that

organized customer segments in an easy-to-use way that makes personalization

the norm—not the exception?

Step 6

Invest in personalization.Have you ever wondered how sites like Amazon recommend which products you

might want to buy, often with astounding accuracy? That’s personalization. Ever had

any experience with online dating? Your romantic encounters were likely a result of

personalization algorithms designed to help users find their perfect match. In fact,

countless modern businesses owe their success to personalization.

An audience of one

Today’s consumers want to be treated as an audience of one. They’ve come to

expect—and even demand—this level of personalization, with many considering it

the new norm. And, as businesses in other verticals have begun to master the art of

personalization, the expectations of consumers have only intensified.

Take Netflix, for example. The on-demand streaming service learns your preferences

and suggests movies and TV shows you’d like to watch from its extensive catalog.

And this strategy appears to be working for them—very well. In fact, research

suggests that 75-80% of what people watch using the service comes from what

Netflix recommends, instead of what people search for.

It comes as no surprise, then, that businesses of all varieties—including financial

services—are scrambling to apply this same logic to their own worlds.

A need for greater agility

The solution lies in moving past legacy composition systems—homegrown and

packaged software—that tie the hands of marketers and make them dependent on

IT for the simplest of changes. Organizations need to modernize their approach

to both print and digital content management and communications, and look for

systems that enable non-technical business users (like marketers and customer

service teams) across an organization to create and update communications at the

speed of business—with compliance seamlessly built in, and without burdening IT.

So what exactly is personalization when it comes to financial communications?

“Personalization” can refer to different things on your website, in emails, and in your

print materials. When done right, personalization means delivering content that

fits the needs of the customer, leading to greater customer satisfaction, increased

revenue, and lasting customer loyalty.

The goal of most financial institutions is to deliver a personalized customer

experience that helps consumers improve how they manage their day-to-day

financial lives. In doing so, banks and can elevate the level of customer engagement,

reduce costs, increase cross-selling, and drive higher levels of customer satisfaction

and loyalty. But how well are financial institutions responding to the potential of

delivering on these expectations?

Unfortunately, when it comes to banks, they all too often fall short in this regard—

they still mail credit card offers to consumers who have that same credit

card already. They send email messages offering mortgage products to 22-year-old

millennial customers who have just graduated from college and hold a mountain

of student debt.

This strategy simply can’t continue for financial institutions that want to survive—

and thrive—now and into the future.

Boston Consulting Group’s study, “The Power of Personalization,” outlines the

financial potential of personalization at a hypothetical bank with $100 billion in

assets—and the results were overwhelmingly positive. By personalizing its pricing

and product offers, such a bank could increase its everyday banking revenue by

as much as $50 million. The bank could generate up to $135 million in additional

new sales by connecting the different channels that customers might use, creating

a frictionless experience for customers who are researching new products. What’s

more, through improved personalization, the bank could identify and intervene in

situations where customers were on the verge of leaving, lowering attrition costs

by $90 million.

Making personalization a priority

Financial institutions should start making personalization work quickly with what

they already have. In other words: launch a personalization pilot in days without

striving for perfection.

For many, the biggest barrier to success comes down to focus, scale, and

commitment. In developing a personalization strategy, many banks get bogged

down trying to collect and integrate massive amounts of data instead of identifying

and collecting the right data. For others, analysis paralysis ensues, and they end

up with results they simply have no ability to act on because they still use manual

processes for executing content. Sometimes a simpler approach—one that relies

on less data that can become actionable fast—is better than more data that can’t

drive action.

Quality of data

VS

Quantity of dataQuality of data Quantity of data

Today’s customers demand that financial services organizations deliver tailored

messages that speak to their needs across all their interactions. Thankfully, there’s

new technology that makes this possible across print and digital channels. Modern

customer communications management systems give business users control over

the rules that drive personalization to enable targeted messages to be created and

sent to customer segments—without involving IT or complex data mining efforts.

One of the challenges with personalization is that it can create an explosion of

content and templates within an organization. In these cases, communications are

stored as static templates, which, over time, may reuse the same block of content

across hundreds of different variations of a letter—one for each brand, offer, or

segment. This makes edits to the templates an unwieldy and time-consuming.

One approach to resolving this common issue for enterprise organizations is to shift

from a solution that requires you to use a large inventory of static templates, to one

that enables a smaller library of dynamic templates that render multiple variations

based on business rules and targeting.

Unlike the static approach, dynamic templates automate many of the change

steps, allowing a change in a master template to be immediately cascaded down

to template variations in lower branches of the hierarchical tree—avoiding the

need to involve IT resources in the process of re-coding each and every static

communication template. The dynamic template approach makes personalization

a reality for large organizations that support multiple brands, offers and products.

While each template shares common elements defined by the parent, the

child-templates may feature personalized graphics, text, and links to efficiently

create a level of data-driven personalization otherwise unachievable. This approach

also makes it quick and easy to create new children that are inherently consistent

and personalized—offering customers and brands the best of both worlds.

Master

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ConclusionBuilding a business case for investing in communications to improve CX

The stakes for improving CX are high. Research shows that 89% of customers have

switched to a competitor because of poor CX. Additionally, 86% say they are willing

to pay more to receive a consistently superior experience. Moreover, analysts report

that 50% of customers leave every five years, and two out of three cite inadequate CX

as a reason for leaving.

Clearly, customer loyalty is something that must not only be earned—it must also be

maintained over time. All of this means you have a good business case to strengthen

your organization’s customer and client engagement programs across all channels.

When developing a strategy to prepare your organization for the customer

experience of tomorrow, ask yourself the following:

Are we putting our content in the hands of the teams who create the

communications to ensure timeliness of delivery?

Do we have the right tools to manage complex content (e.g. regulatory

content, multiple brands, multiple products or multiple offers), without having

to resort to cut-and-paste or duplication to make mass changes easier?

Do our current processes automatically update regulatory information to

ensure compliance?

Are we able to tailor our content appropriately for different audiences, such

as millennials versus seniors, or English versus Spanish speakers?

Can we easily incorporate customer data, including demographics and

transactional history, in the narratives and messages our marketers and

service teams create?

Are there streamlined targeting rules as well as approval and production

processes in place to ensure compliance and quick time-to-market with

relevant content?

To succeed moving forward, financial services organizations need to find ways to

answer each of these questions in the affirmative.

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Finally, adopt technology with a content-centric approach

In order for a customer communications strategy to truly achieve its goal of

enhancing the customer experience, we must move the idea of content to the

forefront of the discussion.

We invite you to explore the idea of content centricity and what it might do for

your CX goals: look for ways to migrate and optimize content from legacy

composition environments into a more centralized approach, look for capabilities

that encourage and support brand and message consistency, look for tools that

enable you to intelligently personalize, manage, and control the message—and

do so at scale.

Creating and distributing content that speaks directly to the wants, needs,

and pain points of your customers will most definitely strengthen your brand’s

customer experience.

What’s next?

See how Messagepoint can help your financial organization achieve customer-centricity.

Book a demo

Contact us today to request a demo or visit us online to see Messagepoint in action.