- Growth & Innovation
10 questions for reassessing the digital experience platform at your financial institution
- Best-in-class composable DXP solutions must feature security and personalization.
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Is there room to improve the custom credit card offers on your bank or credit union’s mobile app? Perhaps you’ve seen frustrated customers tweet about a disjointed retail and brokerage portal experience? No matter the issue, it’s entirely possible that your financial institution’s (FI) digital experience platform (DXP) just isn’t cutting it.
Before you switch to a new platform altogether, it’s essential to understand exactly where your software is falling short and what to look for in a new solution. In my experience, you’ll want to assess three components of your software:
These 10 questions will ultimately help you address all three areas.
1. How well can your software integrate with other digital tools?
Most DXPs on the market are monolithic solutions. That means they package together a range of capabilities – a CMS, CRM, search tool, etc. – with little room to swap out components that aren’t creating value. A composable DXP architecture gives you more freedom and flexibility to choose best-of-breed components. The key is that APIs connect each tool on the back end. With a composable DXP, you can build a stack that best meets your business’s and your customer’s needs (more on this later).
2. How secure is your platform?
All DXPs come with a baseline level of security. But some are more secure than others. And banks need top-notch digital security to protect customers’ financial data. If you’re unsure what security measures to look for, make sure your software is:
While there is some overlap between these standards, compliance with all three will make for a platform your customers can trust.
3. How traceable are your workflows?
It’s essential to trace all customer messaging and user sessions – key for audits to ensure compliance. If a customer says you published a three-percent mortgage rate when your site shows six percent, you’ll need a way to investigate that claim. You’ll want to know who published the rate and when, if it’s true. You might also want to replicate that user session to see if any specific behavior triggered the rate. Your DXP should provide all that information through audit trails that track all changes made. It should also let you replicate sessions and support version control so you can revert as needed. When it’s time for an audit, you can use this information to maintain compliance.
4. What kinds of analytics does your platform support?
Most DXPs let you analyze key customer experience metrics. But your platform should also support other kinds of analytics, such as event logging and monitoring, which helps you mitigate your fraud risk and retrace your steps after a security event, and predictive modeling, which lets you use customer data to predict which customers are at the highest churn risk. Here, composability plays a considerable role. You can choose third-party tools that use emerging AI capabilities to upgrade your analytics.
5. How well does your software support advanced capabilities (such as, offer management and personalization)?
Many of the technical features we’ve discussed so far are baseline expectations. But the most advanced possibilities are also the most exciting. Your DXP should let you harness as much customer data as possible to personalize every digital experience. That means connecting to a customer data platform (CDP) and personalization engine. It should also let you push custom offers and upsell opportunities that feel relevant to every customer. That means custom savings account rates, credit card sign-up bonuses, and more.
Once you’ve assessed your technical capabilities, it’s time to determine how well your platform meets your business needs. That boils down to two key questions: how much value you’re getting and how many lines of business your platform can touch. Let’s dive into the specifics of each.
6. Are you getting enough value for your money?
With monolithic experience management software, the total cost of ownership can skew high – even if you’re not necessarily overpaying for your software. That’s because it’s easy to choose a platform with dozens of features only to use a fraction daily. If this experience sounds familiar, it could be time to scrap your monolith and build a composable stack that helps you get the most value for the lowest cost. That means investing in exactly what you need – nothing less, nothing more.
7. Can your software manage experiences across every line of business?
It’s great if a DXP can help you personalize messaging for your retail banking customers. But what about your credit card customers? And mortgage borrowers? And investment account holders? A good DXP will let you coordinate messaging across every line of business. In practice, that means connecting to data sources from throughout your bank. You can use that data to personalize the experience for every customer.
As the name suggests, experience management software should help you deliver a high-quality customer experience. What counts as “high quality” varies from platform to platform. These three questions can help you assess your own.
8. How connected is your current customer experience?
Most banks need to offer congruent customer experiences across digital touchpoints. Their mobile banking app may feel limited compared to the web portal. Retail and brokerage customers have to use separate portals entirely – one of which is outdated. Your DXP should be able to push consistent messaging wherever customers interact with your bank. That means your mobile app and web portal, of course. But it also means your ATMs and branch kiosks. The more coherent the experience, the more satisfied your customers will be.
9. Can customers find everything they need on your site?
Even the smallest banks have a few thousand pages on their site. For the big banks, think hundreds of thousands. That much site complexity isn’t a bad thing. But customers shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by the information available. That’s why your DXP should make it easy for customers to find what they need when they need it. That could be as simple as an upgraded site-wide search tool. Or a login page that shows a customer’s most used services. Or even a helpful chatbot to answer basic questions about your bank’s offerings.
10. Does your platform help you support underserved customers?
I mentioned earlier that your bank experience should meet the needs of every customer. That includes underbanked customers (i.e., folks with limited access to financial services) and people with disabilities. The right DXP can help via powerful personalization and accessibility tools. For instance, if an underbanked customer already has a checking account, you might push offers for a low- or no-fee savings account and plain-language resources to improve their financial literacy. To help disabled customers, you might ensure all digital touchpoints can adjust color contrast, text size, etc.
If you’re already leaning toward changing platforms, congrats – you’re a quick judge of value. But if you need time to understand the market, that’s all right. The good news is that plenty of software vendors have been designing composable DXP solutions with the capabilities we’ve just explored. A composable CMS can still feature a range of security, accessibility and personalization tools that you can bolt on for maximum effect.
If there’s a single takeaway, it’s this: you can build the best stack for your bank when you know what you want to get out of your DXP. And with so many API solutions, the possibilities are endless.
Young Pham is Chief Strategy Officer at CI&T.
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