The role of the CIO and CMO in supporting customers’ financial wellbeing

Every year, Adobe’s Digital Trends deep-dive reports shine a light on the business and customer experience priorities of specific industry sectors. This year, we see that financial services industry (FSI) organisations are firmly focused on the customer; fostering the agility required to meet unique needs and changing market expectations, evolving transactional customer relationships into life partnerships, and supporting financial wellness through superior a customer experience.

Delivering on these goals calls for cohesive collaboration between an organisation’s marketing and IT functions, so we’ve asked two of the industry’s most seasoned execs – Beyond Bank’s CIO Stevie-Ann Dovico and CMO Christian Johansson (CJ) – to bring the report insights to life. Offering different, yet aligned, perspectives, here’s what they had to say on our recent Digital Trends for FSI customer panel.

Owning the customer interaction

As one of Australia’s largest 100% customer-owned mutual banks, Beyond Bank is setting itself a high watermark. The brand isn’t looking to be the country’s biggest bank, but it is striving to be the undisputed leader in relationships.

This makes sense for a customer- and community-focused institution renowned for branch services and a human approach, but how exactly does it work in the digital age? And how do two discrete business functions that speak entirely different languages collaborate to deliver on Beyond Bank’s brand promise?

According to our report, the top priority in 2024 for FSI organisations is to offer meaningful interactions that improve customers’ financial health, and that certainly tracks for Stevie-Ann and CJ.

“Customer expectation has been changing for a while, especially in digital, but the pandemic really accelerated that change,” Stevie-Ann says. She believes capturing the opportunity to help customers make the best decisions lies in the combination of data, tech and digital.

“Getting our data and processes in a position where we’re using what we know about our customers – how they spend, how they save – we can deliver meaningful interactions at the right time in those pivotal moments in their lives,” Stevie-Ann says.

While digital was once a purely transactional medium, it’s now the consumer's choice for engagement, so the experience must be meaningful. For Stevie-Ann, that translates to being hyper-focused on leveraging data and digital to foster financial wellbeing consistently across channels.

Beyond Bank achieves this by ensuring branch staff have access to data and insights that can be used to enhance face-to-face conversations. It also offers customers other avenues to self-direct their rich digital interactions.

CJ believes this relies on being responsive while finding the human touch. “It’s about giving the customer more control, being helpful and keeping things simple,” he says. It’s also about taking ownership.

“Owning that customer interaction when they’ve come to us – whether with a simple question or something deeply frustrating – if we can solve that quickly, that’s really helpful for future engagement,” he says.

He sees each customer encounter as a step in the loyalty continuum. “You can’t expect to pick up a customer early and retain them for life, without working hard at each interaction,” CJ says.

Cascading collaboration

So, how does Beyond Bank foster the cross-functional collaboration a customer-centric ethos requires? Stevie says it’s a combination of nature and nurture.

“Some foundational Beyond Bank values are having a shared ambition and working together to deliver value for our customers and our communities. If we aren’t aligned, that doesn’t work. Our hiring processes are geared toward finding people with those values.

“That’s the nature side of it. On the nurture side, it comes from leadership and the environment that we create and that cascades throughout the organisation,” Stevie-Ann says.

CJ agrees, emphasising clarity around vision and purpose – and how that translates to the customer. “We take time to ensure our strategy articulates divisional objectives clearly, including our expectations of a leader and the success criteria we use to monitor and measure,” he says.

That customer focus even dictates the style of communication between the two leaders. “I don’t understand tech jargon, and Stevie isn’t fluent in marketing,” CJ says, “so we speak the customer's language when we talk.”

People-centred innovation

Of course, placing the customer at the heart of everything means delivering on expectations. Adobe’s FSI Digital Trends report findings confirm that organisations see generative AI as a tool to accelerate and deliver the engaging, personalised experience that today’s digital-led consumer demands. Yet financial services adoption is lagging.

We wondered how the opportunities and challenges presented by emerging technologies are regarded by the marketing and IT functions in a highly regulated, traditionally risk-averse sector.

Beyond Bank has adopted an optimistic yet cautious approach, trialling the new tech in compartmentalised ways. For CJ and the marketing team, that means using AI capabilities to run tests in SEM to improve efficiency and conversion as a starting point.

This exciting first step lays groundwork today for tomorrow’s advantage, progressing Beyond Bank’s aim to be number one in customer relationships.

From Stevie’s perspective, there are obvious risk management aspects to be covered – ensuring that policies, frameworks, guidance and training are all robust, so there is consistency of application when experimenting.

She’s also energised – while still being cautious – about the broad opportunities the use of technologies like generative AI will bring.

“I’m really excited about how we use this to personalise the experience for our customers, optimise productivity and enable speed to market. Also, on the human side, I’m really passionate about how we use tech to foster greater inclusivity.

“Like helping people living with a disability to participate more fully in society and how we link that to financial wellbeing, which is a cool way of augmenting human capability for good,” Stevie says.

In the meantime, Beyond Bank remains firmly centred on delivering the optimum customer experience.

“We’re really focused on ensuring tech and digital is always creating and returning value…a big part of that piece is really about enabling our front line to have meaningful interactions with our customers and enhance that rich human relationship that we’re known for,” Stevie concludes.

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