From data overload to actionable insights — how financial services organizations can meet customers in the moment

Understanding your customers in real time is the first step in guiding their personal financial journeys. But to do that, you need to get your data in order.

This article is part two in a series that uncovers how leading financial organizations are unifying data, modernizing technology, and reengineering customer outcomes through personalization at scale.

Collecting data isn’t enough to capture a full picture of how your customers are researching, evaluating, and arriving at financial decisions. It’s how you use data to proactively guide customers through their financial journeys that creates valuable interactions and meaningful connections that keep them coming back.

Our research shows that 63% of financial services practitioners find a lack of integration between tech systems to be the main obstacle to providing a connected customer experience. By overcoming this challenge, they can identify relevant data, quickly get the correct insights, and apply them across channels to create personalized experiences that adapt to customers' changing financial needs.

The sheer scale and complexity of today’s data environments can make it extremely challenging to take a systematic approach to extracting customer insights. From system integration pitfalls to managing disconnected data sources and modeling, the financial services industry must overcome these barriers to meet the unique and evolving needs of customers in a growing digital economy.

Regulatory compliance, security, and privacy must also be squarely at the forefront of any process that involves using data to target customers and personalize experiences. Eliminating data silos is both a technical and cultural challenge that organizations must overcome to build a transparent and secure environment in which data is accessible and integrated, and where data integrity is preserved.

The benefits of first-party data

Your organization's access to first-party data offers greater control over compliance, security, and accuracy. Couple this with customer data platforms, and you can build a complete view of who your customers are and where they are on their journey. When customer data is unified into a single profile that can update in real time, you can give the customer the timely and relevant guidance and offers they need across their entire financial journey, both online and offline.

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Keep pace with customer needs

The impact of keeping a unified, real-time pulse on customers extends beyond capturing the right insights. In a continually shifting financial landscape, organizations must use these insights to deliver the next best financial experience to customers based on where they are in their journey. Watch the video below to see it in action.

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Using real-time insights to personalize financial journeys

With the right tech stack in place, you can discover your customers’ interests in real time and ensure their customer profiles are always up to date. That translates into real-time one-to-one experiences and content deployment, such as personalized recommendations for products, services, or information in which the target customer is most likely to be interested. A customer’s profile might even reveal their preferred engagement time with a mobile banking app — say between 7 and 9am on weekdays. Using these insights, the bank can send personalized campaigns via mobile push notifications at times when the customer is most likely to engage.

Real-time insights can also be used to adjust messaging for the most meaningful interaction. Let’s say a bank has identified a customer as part of a credit card propensity segment, which includes personalized site-based experiences, paid media, and email marketing. This customer’s profile updates instantly when they make a large single cash deposit into their checking or savings account, likely their annual bonus. Real-time data also reflects a change in behavior as they start exploring investment solutions on the bank's website. If the bank does not act on these insights and update messaging, the customer may continue to receive unwanted credit card offers and potentially miss out on the opportunity to invest their cash with the bank. Reaching out at the right time with the appropriate message signals to customers that the bank is ready to help them grow their nest egg, ultimately building deeper relationships and lasting trust.

Do it all in real time for more effective personalization

By connecting the right data, financial services companies can guide customers along customized financial journeys that align with their goals. Real-time customer insights allow for effective personalization and the ability to meet customer needs as they pivot on their journeys. Having access to real-time data, along with the means to analyze and draw insights from it, can help you create highly personalized journeys that keep your customer front and center. It’s a trustworthy way to make sure your company is there for the financial decisions that matter most.

Learn more about how to reimagine your data strategy in our guide Financial Organizations Get Personal when Data Gets Moving.