Financial brands that can skillfully guide customers across every channel are better positioned to deliver financial advice precisely when and where it's needed most.
Today, individuals navigate complex financial paths, particularly during significant life moments, such as buying a home or starting a business. They expect personalized support every step of the way.
While serving millions of unique customer needs with limited resources might seem impossible for financial services, AI and rules-based automation are making it happen. Data-driven insights now enable personalized interactions at every touchpoint, ensuring a seamless and ideal customer experience throughout their journey.
This post will cover:
Leverage AI to create a personalized customer experience.
A recent Forrester report commissioned by Adobe highlights the importance of having a deep understanding of a customer’s goals and preferences to provide personalized assistance on the right channel at the right moment. Proactively guiding customers along an omnichannel journey that rarely, if ever, follows a linear path is only possible with the help of technological solutions that turn data into action.
A real-time customer profile, updated instantly across all channels, provides this deep customer understanding. It fuels personalized experiences that consistently exceed expectations. Coupled with a streamlined content supply chain, marketers always have fresh, approved content ready to drive customer engagement.
Organizations can then optimize data analysis and content management using AI and automation to guide the customer journey precisely. This strategy boosts return on investment (ROI) by delivering highly relevant offers that significantly increase engagement and conversions across all channels, both online and offline. A recent study reveals that 70% of Experience Leaders — firms that achieve significant ROI from personalization at scale — already utilize AI-powered engines to tailor messages and experiences to customers' preferred channels.
By harnessing advanced AI and automation, financial services can enhance the customer journey, tailoring offers and communications to meet the needs of all customers. This means personalizing based on factors like recent interactions, historical value, and eligibility for specific products. AI helps determine if a customer needs a service update or a new marketing offer, ensuring relevant and practical experiences are delivered at the ideal time on their preferred channel. Automation, including features such as frequency capping, also prevents customers from being overwhelmed with excessive messaging. These are just a few ways AI and automation empower financial organizations to deliver more personalized, engaging, and impactful customer experiences.
Integrate generative AI for hyper-personalization.
The core of revolutionizing the omnichannel journey lies in real-time, data-driven personalization. Generative AI is now helping financial services companies personalize their marketing efforts for customers. This goes beyond simply recommending a product to create content, experiences, and even advice that feels uniquely crafted for everyone.
Imagine a customer browsing mortgage options. Instead of generic information, generative AI could:
- Instantly draft personalized summaries of complex financial products in plain language, addressing their specific concerns based on their browsing history.
- Generate custom financial health tips that integrate their spending patterns and savings goals, delivered through their preferred channel (e.g., a personalized message in their banking app or a summary email).
- Power AI-driven chatbots that don't just answer questions, but proactively offer next steps, anticipate needs, and provide empathy-driven responses, making self-service feel more human.
This capability enables financial institutions to scale hyper-personalization, ensuring every interaction is not only relevant but also truly engaging and helpful, ultimately strengthening customer relationships and accelerating the customer journey.
Navigating data privacy and building trust in the AI era.
As financial services adopt AI, particularly generative AI, protecting data privacy, ensuring ethical use, and building customer trust become critical priorities. This goes beyond regulatory compliance; it’s about securing sensitive information and strengthening brand integrity.
To ensure your omnichannel strategy remains trustworthy and compliant:
- Prioritize transparency. Be clear with customers about how their data is being used to personalize their experiences. Simple, understandable privacy policies and opt-in/opt-out options are crucial.
- Ensure ethical AI practices. Implement robust governance frameworks for your AI models. This includes regularly auditing algorithms for bias, ensuring fairness in recommendations, and explaining how AI decisions are made, particularly when those decisions impact a customer's financial well-being.
- Comply with evolving regulations. Stay ahead of global data privacy regulations (like GDPR, CCPA, and emerging AI-specific laws). Your omnichannel platform should offer the flexibility to adapt to new compliance requirements, ensuring data security and customer rights are always protected.
- Focus on security. The integration of more data and AI models necessitates advanced cybersecurity measures to prevent breaches and protect customer financial information across all touchpoints.
Use cross-channel insights to find the best experience.
To provide truly relevant and valuable experiences aligned with each customer’s unique goals, financial services organizations must track their customer’s journey in real time using cross-channel insights. Tools like predictive analytics can offer insights into what customers are likely to do next, allowing you to pivot as soon as the customer journey takes a turn.
Without real-time journey visibility, even sophisticated segmentation can lead to mismatched offers and missed opportunities to deepen relationships. Customers might get retargeting offers that don’t match their current financial goals — like an offer on a second mortgage when they haven’t secured their first — or be funneled into a nurture sequence they aren’t quite ready for.
When you follow your customers’ journey in real time, you can:
- Gather data from diverse sources to understand who your customer is and their financial well-being.
- Choose the message, offer, or guidance most relevant to the customer’s current needs.
- Determine how far along the customer is in their journey to ensure subsequent interactions build on previous ones.
- Understand the customer’s preferred communication channel and reach them where they are most likely to engage, optimizing key performance indicators (KPIs).
With an AI-driven decision engine at the helm, a customer could go from abandoning an application to reengaging with your company in a journey that looks something like this:
Add value to the customer’s financial health
Financial institutions can utilize data and intelligent decision-making to gain a deeper understanding of their customers — who they are, what they are doing, and why — and to provide personalized education and guidance as they navigate across various channels. By utilizing relevant data, institutions can create personalized and timely content that enables customers to make informed choices when it matters most.
For example, a bank can proactively collect insights from marketing, transactional, and behavioral data to anticipate and prevent customer churn. If a customer stops engaging with marketing materials, their profile shows a drop in account balances and spending, along with an increase in calls to the call center. All these signs could indicate a financial health risk. The bank can respond by sending an email for a cash advance capability, knowing the customer can draw from an upcoming direct deposit. The bank’s website can also adjust its messaging to promote credit-boosting resources or articles on how to save money. And suppose the customer calls into the call center or visits an in-person branch. In that case, the bank representative will be well-informed about their situation and can provide tailored guidance to support their financial well-being. By prioritizing proper guidance, the bank can improve customer satisfaction and retain deposits in the long run.
When top organizations utilize real-time customer behavior, they are 4.8 times more likely to provide personalized experiences successfully. This level of customer engagement can only be achieved through an AI-powered decision engine that uses data to inform the creation and delivery of customized experiences.
How Adobe can help.
Customers turn to financial institutions for guidance on managing their finances, including spending, saving, borrowing, investing, and planning. Personalizing the customer experience in real time across every channel presents a clear opportunity for these organizations to strengthen relationships and establish themselves as trusted financial advisors. As a leading provider of customer experience platforms, Adobe is well-positioned to support the transformation of your team, processes, and technology, enabling you to deliver impactful experiences that drive meaningful action.
See the power of Adobe’s financial services solutions to streamline operations, automate regulatory processes, and deliver seamless, personalized customer experiences.
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