Baking Up a Secure,
Omni-convenient Customer Experience for the Financial Industry
Learn how to increase efficiencies and decrease operating expenses from the best in the business.
Many a cookbook starts with a culinary why. A chef’s big dreams. A restaurant’s humble beginnings. A recipe that goes back several generations. Our why pays homage to our customers' unique recipe for success and the Twilio products that helped them get there. We hope their stories inspire you to find the same.
Financial services is an industry unto its own — it faces all of the challenges that other industries face and it’s highly regulated. Leaders have to mix the perfect combination of compliance, accelerating customer expectations, and increasingly complex technical environments together to achieve success. While reducing operating expenses and increasing revenue is table stakes, modern financial institutions know that without serving up a delicious customer experience, they’ll be delivering dishes to empty tables.
There’s no need to rip and replace your systems when you work with Twilio’s tools. You can efficiently and securely add layers of customer experience to your existing stack. That means more loyal and more profitable customers for financial institutions in the long run.
What are the key ingredients to competing with
best-in-class financial institutions today?
Convenience:
Your customers and members are, as we say in “the biz,” fickle diners. According to the 2022 Achieving Customer Amazement Study, 75% of customers would switch companies if they found out a competitor was more convenient to do business with.
Because for most, interacting with a financial institution is not a nicety. It’s the way consumers and businesses manage their investments and money. Ultimately, customers are seeking not just a lack of friction, but ease and convenience in their transactions. They want to do what they want, when they want, without your help.
What can you do?
Spice up your customer experience with technology that can that can make it more palatable for the customer.
of customers would switch companies if they found out a competitor was more convenient to do business with.
How do customers prefer to interact with their financial assets?
How do customers prefer to interact with their financial assets?
All of the above! Diversification of communication channels is key to meet customers the way they'd prefer.
Flexibility:
Did we mention that customers want what they want when they want it? More than ever, they want to interact with their financial assets on their terms, whether it’s virtual customer service, SMS notifications, mobile customer experience advancements, WhatsApp messages, or touchless kiosks.
What can you do?
Diversify your communication channels, and create an infrastructure that allows you to meet customers at their table.
Trust:
Carefully plated flexibility and convenience are only as good as the technology infrastructure you put them on. Consumers are more aware than ever that their information is at risk.
But there’s a trust gap. According to our 2022 State of Customer Engagement Report, 95% of companies say they protect consumers’ data privacy, but only 65% of consumers believe that to be the case. In addition, financial institutions have a unique understanding of the risks they face when handling customers’ money. Mitigating liability is a top concern.
What can you do?
Be realistic about how concerned customers are about security. Ensure that your systems are designed for trust, security, and compliance.
In order to ensure that the ingredients sing, you need to pair them with strategies that address core customer demands. This is how successful Twilio customers have accomplished more satisfying and secure customer experiences.
Ready to dig in? Let’s go!
The Menu
Security, compliance, authentication,
oh my
360-Degree view of the customer
The financial industry is reinventing itself. From user experience to outreach strategies, it’s all about putting customers first.
Most organizations have a rich store of customer data available. Many new financial service organizations have baked in the use of this data as part of their strategy from day one. That means that legacy establishments need to differentiate themselves beyond typical offerings like free services and easily accessible login buttons. Organizations need to start looking at their data from a holistic perspective to craft intelligent customer engagement strategies that will continue to provide value and build trust with their customers. According to Trust Pilot, online conversion rates can improve by roughly 8% when you include personalized consumer experiences.
Tossing a glossy web experience on top of a clunky legacy system simply won’t cut it anymore. The financial industry needs to ensure that the systems it uses to market to and serve its customers are integrated seamlessly into its existing technology stack.
See how NuBank, a digital-first bank, is improving the customer experience for a diverse cross-section of people.
See how NuBank, a digital-first bank, is improving the customer experience for a diverse cross-section of people.
Nubank has baked transparency, ease of understanding, and hassle-free banking into the DNA of its company. Nubank zeroed in on ensuring that they were meeting the needs of the modern banking customer while leaving behind the leftovers from traditional banking in Latin America.
During a time of financial instability, they offered products with special refinancing conditions, lower interest rates, and extended payment terms. With 42,000 new users signing up a day, they needed to find strategies that would help them create a simple customer experience that would appeal to their broad audience.
Recipe for a 360-degree view of the customer
INGREDIENTS NEEDED
- Twilio Flex
A sweet tooth for greater autonomy, stability, and security
“
A NOTE FROM THE CHEF
RECIPE
Twilio became a partner in the bank's customer engagement strategy. Currently, Nubank uses Twilio Flex to serve customers through voice channels, emergency calls (ombudsman), alerts via SMS, and information and campaigns via email through Sendgrid.
Another benefit of using Twilio Flex within fintech is Twilio’s support service, which helped Nubank build the ideal solution for their company. The result included 90+ NPS scores and 113 million hours saved in wait times.
Why convenience is the secret ingredient
to brand loyalty
Financial organizations take security, compliance, and authentication seriously. It’s a critical piece of the customer trust pie, and the stakes are high if there is a breach. Of course, ensuring you keep accounts secure, adhere to regulations, and carefully manage assets shouldn’t stand in the way of an excellent customer experience.
How do you manage the meat and potatoes of a financial institution while also crafting a customer-first experience? By using flexible, iterative technology layers that give you the confidence to know you’re protected while creating a seamless, omnichannel approach for your customer.
It’s all about protecting information by optimizing security measures with minimal customer friction.
Let’s see how some of our customers are slinging security in the “kitchen.”
Learn how Hearsay dishes up a financial service client engagement platform that serves an exceptional and compliant customer experience.
Learn how Hearsay dishes up a financial service client engagement platform that serves an exceptional and compliant customer experience.
The financial industry is looking to provide Michelin-star security and customer service to its members and customers. That’s why leading enterprise financial firms like American Family Insurance and Charles Schwab rely on Hearsay’s platform to equip their advisors with the tools they need to guide clients through some of their most important financial decisions.
As the global shift to working at home manifested in the financial service industry, many organizations moved away from corporate-provided devices and towards personal devices to help employees adapt more quickly. Hearsay needed a solution to quickly and compliantly build new channels for texts and calls—all while ensuring a smooth transition for enterprise field teams.
Recipe for security
INGREDIENTS NEEDED
A craving for outstanding (and secure) customer experiences
“
A NOTE FROM THE CHEF
RECIPE
Using Twilio Programmable Messaging and Programmable Voice, Hearsay enables more than 200,000 financial advisors to provide secure guidance to their customers—with the flexibility to use their personal devices. This results in saving millions in operating costs for enterprise organizations and empowering field reps to work from home without having to rely on company devices.
One firm that implemented Hearsay’s texting solution achieved a return on investment of nearly 400% due to operational efficiencies, improved risk mitigation, and increased client acquisition and retention.
Customer-first communication
With so many plates to juggle, the financial services industry is a complicated sector. Customers don’t really want to know how the sausage is made, however. What they want is a good customer experience, and leaders do not take their concerns lightly. In fact, in a recent survey of nearly 1,100 executives by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 64% of the financial service respondents reported that “improving [customer experience] is a top-five business priority.”
While some customers may remember the “old days” of personal customer service at an office or an in-person branch, current customers tend to be digital natives that expect on-demand help and convenient communications. No matter what your target demographic is, secure and tailored communication is the way to secure future revenue.
How can financial organizations remove barriers to good customer experience while improving loyalty and retention? Combine a deep understanding of customer needs with iterative technology to build a relevant, helpful, and stress-free customer experience.
Let’s see how other organizations helped sweeten the deal with customer service.
Get a peek into how Better Mortgage evolved its contact center, de-siloed its data, and took ownership over its customer experience.
Recipe for customer-first communication
INGREDIENTS NEEDED
- Twilio SendGrid
An understanding of how to take the customer experience one bite at a time
“
A NOTE FROM THE CHEF
RECIPE
To bridge the gap between their proprietary SaaS contact center and their mortgage origination and lead generation software, Better Mortgage deployed Twilio Flex. They chose Flex to support an optimal customer journey and iterate on an available solution. The result gives borrowers a simple and direct line of communication to consultants and supervisors.
This deployment also allowed the business to create a better employee experience, reducing manual tasks. This meant that Better Mortgage saved tons of employee hours, improved employee satisfaction, and created an exceptional customer experience—all with Twilio Flex.
Super-self-service
Consumers are demanding more self-service options than ever. What was once a black box of calculations done by bankers, lenders, and insurance agents behind the scenes is now readily available to customers online. They put in their parameters and away they go!
As consumers come to rely on those services to make good choices for managing their finances and risk, the stakes are higher than ever. To ensure that customers, members, and clients can order the right things from the menu, organizations should be prepared to have business continuity plans that allow the second line of support if things go awry. Having consistent support to offer clarity about products and services and guide customers through complex processes will increase conversion and improve loyalty.
“
Of course, this all depends on the infrastructure that support is built on. If your company’s phone line goes down, or you’re unable to reach out to your customer in their preferred channel, they can’t get the help they need, ultimately leading to an unhappy experience for all.
How are companies building a more resilient communication infrastructure? Let’s see what they ordered:
Explore how QuoteWizard revived their reliable phone infrastructure when their legacy phone system experienced an outage.
Explore how QuoteWizard revived their reliable phone infrastructure when their legacy phone system experienced an outage.
Future Crisis Averted!
QuoteWizard’s legacy telephone service provider had an outage, bringing down the interactive voice response (IVR) that powered their quoting service. The team decided to re-deploy using Twilio's Voice API and integrated IVR capabilities.
A short four hours later, they built, tested, and deployed a working replacement for their existing provider. All the while, their existing service provider's outage continued.
Recipe for uninterrupted self-service
INGREDIENTS NEEDED
- Twilio Programmable Voice
A hankering for a more reliable customer experience
RECIPE
With over 7,000 agents on the platform, and over 1 million leads processed each month, the stakes were high to ensure that the engine fueling their business worked seamlessly. QuoteWizard’s integration with Twilio Voice allowed them to quickly stand up a solution that restored an excellent service experience.
The results speak for themselves: QuoteWizard dramatically reduced downtime, is able to scale its operation smoothly, and is saving over $3,000 a month in fees.
The secret sauce to future-proof a financial institution
According to Accenture, nearly all banks agree that branches will need to be redesigned in the next few years to meet new demands. Although many financial service organizations are risk averse, most can see that doing nothing is too great a risk to take. If your organization is sitting at a booth waiting for the waitstaff to deliver digital transformation and a better customer experience right to your table, you will be in for a long wait.
Building iterative, customer-focused, compliance-regulated technology solutions is the recipe for success. Not only are you able to avoid mitigatable risks, but you’ll improve customer experience, overall customer lifetime value, employee experience, and reduce the technical debt you’ll be responsible for down the road.
Each of our customers has found a unique and special recipe using Twilio products to season their own success. With the following ingredients, any financial institution can skip right to the front of the waitlist:
Convenience: Create a more satisfying customer experience.
Flexibility: No need to rip and replace, just layer and iterate.
Trust: Know that the information is protected and compliant.
Bon appetit!
What will your perfect recipe for success look like?