The positive feedback loop between digitization and end-user expectations is transforming banking, finance and payments.
And as the world evolves, those firms that fall behind the cutting-edge of digital personalization could eventually see their growth prospects dulled.
That’s because in this new environment, “user experience matters,” Reetika Grewal, head of digital for commercial banking and the Corporate and Investment Banking at Wells Fargo, told PYMNTS.
It’s no longer enough to simply provide a product or service; companies must now focus on providing their customers a seamless and personalized experience.
User experience is becoming a critical factor in the success of enterprise commercial businesses. “As a company grows, their needs grow, and you need to make sure to modify the client experience to meet them where they’re at,” Grewal said.
She explained that Wells Fargo uses “some really cool technology” such as micro front ends to help bring “back-end experiences together for customers in order for them to have a powerful user experience.”
Cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can help firms stay ahead of the curve by providing tailored solutions that meet the specific needs of each client, helping drive lifetime customer satisfaction and retention.
Still, as companies strive to provide personalized experiences for their enterprise customers, the first thing they often realize is the sheer breadth of their total audience’s range.
“Clients are so different in terms of where they are in their life cycle, what their needs are, what systems they use — it can’t just be one size fits all,” Grewal said.
She said one of her firm’s first steps was to build out a library of personas to better understand where customers were in their unique business lifecycle stage and provide them with the best possible experience tailored to the needs of that particular growth touchpoint.
By adding AI and ML capabilities into the mix, firms can continually refine meaningful personalization while ensuring there’s more than enough room for scalability that can empower businesses to grow.
“Not surprisingly, when you think about how organizations are trying to drive changes in their operations, it varies a lot by who and what kind of business we’re talking about,” Grewal said. “The key things to think about are where can we automate processes and make it easy for them to use the systems while streamlining their reconciliations.”
After all, at the end of the day, things boil down to a fundamental focus on “money in and money out,” she said — and making sure that process is as easy, trackable and scalable as possible.
In the instant payment and real-time payment space, the experience matters more than ever. Ease of origination, speed, API availability and integration into other systems are crucial in providing a seamless experience for customers.
That’s why moving to an always-on payments environment may seem daunting to many businesses that have structured their working capital and cash flow forecasting strategies around the legacy settlement times of money movement.
“The experience matters, how you’re able to originate a transaction matters, the ease at which you can do it, the speed at which you can do it, that all matters,” Grewal said.
Additionally, reconciliation becomes a “very different challenge” in the real-time payments space versus ACH, where settlement is delayed, she said, and providing as seamless an experience as possible around that reconciliation is where firms can drive competitive differentiation.
“Integration into the workflows from a payment out perspective is what will drive the usage,” Grewal explained. “As it relates to the RFP [request for payment] variance … the goal is to support companies as they grow and modify the experience to meet them where they’re at.”
Critical to Wells Fargo’s focus on customer centricity is giving clients the tools and product silos that are most relevant to their own payments journey, she said.
“Clients don’t come in and say, for example, ‘I really need to make an ACH, SEC code, PPD transaction. They just know they need to pay a person,’ and we are here to give them the benefit of everything we know about what they need to help them make the most advantageous decision,” Grewal said.