Omnichannel strategy for an optimal customer journey.

The stage for digital know-how.

How to make your customers in the financial sector happy with omnichannel strategy and hybrid consulting

Illustration zur Checkliste für hybride Beratung

Customer Experience

Linking offline business with online offers in a meaningful way – unfortunately, many financial service providers still think in terms of separate channels and individual touchpoints when facing this challenge. Improve that and make your customers happy with a holistic omnichannel strategy.

Your customers need a flexible offer with suitable digital and classic analogue services. The more consistent your customer's journey is, the more your customers – and ultimately you yourself – benefit.

The following questions are currently decisive for digitisation in the financial sector:

How does a continuous customer journey tailored to the individual user emerge from the two "worlds" of online and offline?
How do we get a holistic view of our customers?
How can marketing automation support us in a targeted manner?

Advantages of an omnichannel strategy in the financial industry

With an omnichannel strategy, you can increase the qualitative consulting time of your customers.
In addition, an integrated customer journey provides you with important information for cross-selling and offers perfectly tailored to the user.
With hybrid consulting, customers can also use products requiring intensive advice – such as mortgage financing or term life insurance – completely online.

Conditions for a consistent customer journey in the financial industry

The individual user and his needs are the basis for optimal offers. If you know what your users need and when, you can provide services proactively and successfully. Therefore, you should first carry out analyses to get a clear and holistic picture of your users.

Further basic requirements for a consistent customer journey are:

Suitable methods and processes that you constantly adapt and develop,
a suitable technical basis for marketing automation and
an examination of the project for its feasibility.

In the following section, you will find the most important steps for the successful implementation of an omnichannel project using the example of hybrid consulting.

Checklist for the introduction of hybrid consulting — Your checklist for the introduction of hybrid consulting

Your checklist for the introduction of hybrid consulting

Introducing hybrid counselling in six steps

1. Create a project profile.

First things first – before you start the implementation, you need a roadmap for the introduction of hybrid consulting. To do this, you first develop a vision, define goals, metrics and KPIs, and check the solution for technical feasibility.

My recommendation: It's best to get all the relevant stakeholders on board with this first step. Project experience shows that this is unfortunately often forgotten in the operational business. This will give you important input for your vision. In addition, make sure that you consider all aspects from the very beginning.

2. Establish a constant and long-term view on the end customers.

"Who was my target group again?" That's a sentence we at Namics still hear way too often from companies. In order not to lose sight of your goal during the project, it is best to work with personas. Always create them based on real users.

My recommendation: Pilot testing or surveys of your real users will give you important first-hand information. This way you can define the customer journey and always have the complete process in mind. Visualise the end-to-end process with a customer journey canvas.

3. Develop a roadmap.

Often things have to happen quickly: A project is conceived briefly, developed quickly and then implemented ad hoc. But if you introduce a video consulting tool, for example, it must be well prepared and implemented in several intermediate steps. Don't worry: this does not automatically mean that implementation takes longer. Rather, it allows you to take a long-term view of the service and consider possible improvements.

My recommendation: Our experience shows that it helps companies to break down and develop goals and KPIs on a quarterly basis, for example, and share them with the most important stakeholders in a report. Make regular hypotheses for validation and define milestones from the client's perspective.

4. Carry out regular performance reviews.

Mitarbeiterin erhält Feedback zu einer Aufgabe von einem Kollegen

Presumptions and assumptions alone are not enough: Regular testing and feedback from interviews facilitate well-founded and data-based decisions. Continuous data acquisition and, above all, data use is essential for the success of your project. This may sound simple, but our data maturity study shows that many companies already collect data, but do not use and analyse it properly.

My recommendation: You can obtain helpful data for hybrid consulting in your bank, for example, by evaluating the traffic or sales tunnel and interviewing users.

5. Make continuous improvements and exploit potential.

Namics Mitarbeiter arbeitet im Jira und einem Dashboard

Continuous improvement and continuous discovery also play an important role in hybrid consulting. On the one hand, this means continuously optimising existing systems. For example, if the video identification does not work properly in online consulting, introduce a digital signature instead.

On the other hand, financial service providers should be able to discover new business opportunities quickly and consistently and supplement the project accordingly.

My recommendation: A methodology that has proven itself for us in this context is Dual-Track Scrum.

6. Establish meeting structures.

Regular meetings with all parties involved are important to drive your project forward. In the meetings you plan and check its status quo.

Those responsible should evaluate the generated data, form hypotheses and adjust goals.

My recommendation: If you are introducing hybrid consulting, we recommend weekly meetings at first. If your system has been running smoothly for some time, you can also schedule meetings every quarter or six months.

My conclusion: With a holistic customer journey to success

To be successful in the financial sector, digital and analog services must be seamlessly combined to form a flexible offering. Marketing automation and next best actions support you in this. Would you like to learn more about the topic of integrated customer journeys and value creation through the right next best action? Then take a look at our free webinar "Real-time decision making made easy".

Watch webinar here.