OK, so you’re in the financial services industry and you’re on board with digital transformation. Your ideas are cooking, your tech is on point and you’ve just rolled out your latest innovation to market. Great! Wait, you’re not getting the response you expected? Your tip-top tech isn’t resonating with customers? OK, but your employees are up-to-scratch and on-hand to help them? Oh, they don’t know how to use it either? …OK, I think I know what the problem is.

The answer: Cultural disconnection.

In the past half a decade we’ve said ‘ta-ta’ to traditional banking which has typically remained stagnant in its reliance on human interaction – and, why not? People expect to speak to someone to deposit a cheque, to open a new account, to transfer funds, or to increase their overdraft limit; and your employees have always been there with all the answers. That was of course, before things were made much more convenient with a bit of artificial intelligence, where all of these tasks could be done without your bum leaving the seat.

Businesses within the finance industry have realized the necessity of embracing the disruptive landscape of new digital appetites; developing eCommerce platforms, embedding online chat options and creating mobile apps – essentially changing the once timeless face of cold, hard money. On paper, this all sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Just get your website sorted, get an app out there and watch as employees and customers embrace it with open arms…

Except technology isn’t the hard part.

What good is the world’s best app if your customers don’t know how to use it and your employees don’t know enough about its functionality to help them get their heads around it? The fact is, customer preferences and attitudes are changing and other industries have been quicker to react by digitalizing customer experience.

But regardless of how quick your digital reflexes have been, customers expect their bank to hit the digital experience bar set by Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANG), and they expect new banking features to be just as easy to adopt…no pressure!

Think about it; you’ve invested so much time and money building digital features to make your customers’ lives better. But focusing primarily on the ‘building’ is a trap that catches most financial firms. The key is paying attention to the other side of the coin: employee experience. In other words, failing to engage your employees in a digital culture means failing to increase digital value to your customers.

Take this familiar scenario:

You’ve just added cool new features to your mobile app – think Siri® Pay Bill, Artificial Intelligence, or perhaps Zelle®. Your customers are having difficulty setting them up. Your in-branch employees haven’t even heard about them, never mind possess the ability to help set them up. The call-centre isn’t much help either (probably forgot to download that “super helpful” 20 page how-to PDF you sent them). Bingo! You’ve put a banner on your website introducing new features. …Oh wait…no, still no actual directions on how to set them up…

Now imagine this one:

Every time your customer walks in-branch, interacts with your mobile app, or goes online, they’re able to have a personalized, immediate and a proactive relationship with you and your innovations. Your employees have already done simulators of new features, they’ve completed 60-second micro-learning modules, and they’ve gained as much knowledge as possible to stay on top of the company’s digital leaderboard.

They are ready. Ready to answer questions. Ready to demo features. Ready to seamlessly transfer knowledge; to deliver exceptional customer experience, and they are ready for your digital transformation.

How did we do it, hear us talk at Sibos? 

Partnering with RBC, The Royal Bank of Canada, Horizn will be presenting at the Sibos FinTech Theatre on Monday October 16th 2:00pm – 2:30pm. Together they will reveal how they implemented what may be the first Financial Industry Mobile Activation Strategy in North America.

Build it and they will come,” is a myth!

It could be viewed as the perfect storm, despite leading the World with innovative mobile payment technology, RBC needed to quickly train front-line employees on its mobile capabilities. Agile development had taken root, and a deep series of agile product roadmap releases was set to come fast and furious for the foreseeable future. There was a need for a new capability to support the bank’s digital fluency and what would be very rapid digital transformation. There was no method to accommodate just-in-time learning, let alone learning that was experiential and could take advantage of the latest in cognitive behavioural science.

RBC with Horizn, will talk about how they implemented what may be the first Financial Industry Mobile Activation Strategy in North America. They will demo how the platform is now being used with employees, in-branch and directly with customers delivering mobile awareness, activation, and advocacy. Whether it’s embedding AI into the RBC mobile app, launching new online capabilities or anything in between, this strategy efficiently and effectively engaged front-line employees and created true digital brand ambassadors.

I’ll say it again: ‘Build it and they’ll come’ is a myth.

In the last leg of transformation, The Horizn Knowledge Platform equips employees and customers with the knowledge they need to increase digital adoption, improve the customer experience and accelerate sales.