The wealth management industry is under transformation. In an effort to win back trust, attract new customers and retain existing ones, firms are investing in new collaborative technologies that support their business model transformation from transactions to interactions focused on client centricity. Various McKinsey research and studies have shown that those who adopt more client-centric tools and processes can increase revenues up to 20 percent and profitability up to 2.5 times. Cisco’s own research has shown that wealth management firms that adopt client centric tools such as video can reduce client attrition, especially for the critical under-55 segment. Part of this transformation involves investing in video capabilities that enable firms and their experts to touch more customers, more often and in a more intimate manner than voice and email do today.

Getting the right expert to the right customer, at the right time is crucial in being able to offer superior customer service and improve cross-sell and up-sell rates. Another critical, competitive differentiator is embedding video capabilities into the mobile channels and applications customers already use. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, customerexperience, Financial Services, omnichannel, video, wealth management

Cisco’s Financial Services Industry Marketing team is pleased to welcome a monthly contribution from industry professionals sharing their insights and observations on key trends in the Financial Services industry. The opinions expressed in these posts are those of our welcomed guests and may not reflect the opinions of Cisco.

Jerry Silva, Principal at PG Silva Consulting, is a 25 year industry veteran and thought leader in retail banking. He recently had the opportunity to discuss what comprises a high quality customer experience with Kelly McSwain-Campbell, Customer Experience Director at US Bank. In this role, Kelly is responsible for working across the enterprise with all lines of business and channels to help ensure teams deliver a differentiated customer experience that builds stronger and deeper relationships.

Delighting the Customer: Simple Works

As a banker and technologist, I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with systems that manage customer self-service channels like the ATMs and online banking, or with the systems that bank staff uses to interact with the customer. As a consumer of banking services myself, I’ve always been interested in the people side of services delivery and how banks can deliver quality experiences at the branch and the attended contact center.

I recently had a chat with Kelly McSwain-Campbell, SVP and Customer Experience Director at Minneapolis-based US Bancorp, and asked her for some insight into today’s challenges and how she manages to delight the customer in spite of the increasing complexity of the banking environment. Organizational and technology complexity sometimes work to hinder our ability to provide an excellent customer experience and we as bankers sometimes find ourselves even more distant from our customers.

But during my discussion with Ms. McSwain-Campbell, she made it clear that given the challenges with managing customer expectations across the multiple delivery channels, she is focusing on simple but effective ways to stay connected with customers at each point of interaction. We spoke about three areas that can ensure customers continue to enjoy the best banking experience possible. Read More »

Tags: branch, Cisco, customerexperience, Financial Services, personalized service, retail banking

Some might argue that retail banking is known more for its inconveniences than its convenience. As an example, the common term ‘banker’s hours’ is synonymous with “being open for the shortest and most inconvenient amount of time”. Despite that legacy, retail banks have made a concerted effort and real progress to extend services through various delivery channels to improve the retail banking customer experience.

Banks may have closed the customer service gap with other industries, but like other industries, must stay ahead of the consumer to deliver an experience that provides profitable value and differentiation. According to a recent report, what most customers want from their banks is greater access and more personalized experiences (in the form of advice, products, and services).

It’s not a surprising conclusion especially to the banking industry which has adapted a retail industry term -- omnichannel -- to describe the needed capabilities to deliver a consistent customer experience across all channels.

The Cisco Connected Customer Experience Report for Retail Banking -- a global survey of consumers and bank professionals conducted in early 2013 -- highlights the opportunities and the challenges that banking institutions face in meeting current and future customer expectations. Globally, consumers ranked Read More »

Tags: branch, Cisco, customer, customerexperience, delivery channel, Financial Services, omnichannel, personalized service, retail banking

Technology has and will continue to be a key enabler across every product delivery channel within the financial services sector. You simply need to explore some of the newer bank branches, available applications within app stores or investigate online innovations inherent in many institutions’ web presence to see how engrained technology has become in the customer experience. While firms are making this transition in differentiated form factors and across different channels, the trend itself is clear and pervasive; underpinned by the “anywhere, anytime” mantra and the continued consumerization of technology.

These channel developments cut across all products, but all have one common element – enabling improved and increased collaboration between institutions, their clients, businesses and/or consumers to drive accretive revenue. While these developments have and will continue to deliver impressive initial returns, they are largely siloed by either a business unit and/or delivery channel. The true potential value can only be unlocked by enabling a seamless and contextual integration of the physical, direct and mobile channels – the evolution from multi-channel to omnichannel.

The omnichannel model enables the customer to choose how and by what method they want to conduct their business, be that in person, via a mobile device, from the home, online or with telephony. Cisco’s IBSG team has published a white paper that looks into the transformation of institutions from multi-channel to omnichannel. While the method of communication is important, the true differentiator in transformational channel evolution is the ability to integrate interaction. Institutions must be aware of the context and outcomes of customer interactions as customers move from channel to channel, product to product, or business line to business line.

From an institutional point of view, the value in the omnichannel impacts multiple factors. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, customer experience, Financial Services, insurance, omnichannel, remote expert, retail banking

Today, April 8, 2013, the brightest of Wall Street are meeting at the 10^th Annual High Performance Computing Linux for Wall Street event in New York to learn about the latest technology innovations that give financial trading firms a competitive edge. With network latency achieving speeds of less than 50 nanoseconds, this year’s event focuses not only on speed but also on cutting-edge advances in network visibility, analytics and instrumentation. One way Cisco is helping traders gain a competitive edge in this area is by offloading the gathering of analytics data to the network devices, and working with industry leading monitoring firms like Corvil and TS-Associates to decode these new sources of data.

No doubt, high performance trading systems are becoming faster, processing more data than ever before. Network performance is of paramount importance in high performance trading markets where obtaining and acting on real-time equities, options and other financial market information, nanoseconds faster than competitors, may be worth millions of dollars. While complex trading analysis and risk mitigation still need to be performed outside the network layer, significant cost savings and scale advantages can be obtained by leveraging embedded intelligence in the network to enable key functions such as fabric congestion monitoring and intelligent traffic mirroring. Read More »

Tags: acitve buffer monitoring, Cisco, financial markets, Financial Services, HPC, HPT, HPTF, network latency