It looks like we have a customer experience paradox.
Imagine standing outside a house, admiring the garden, backyard, and all the rooms that offer unique possibilities.
You see endless potential.
But once inside, what if you were locked in just one room? You’d lose access to all the possibilities you had imagined, confined to a small part of the house.
Now, think about our business customer experiences.
Before they become customers, prospects are presented with the full spectrum of products—checking accounts, loans, home insurance, auto insurance, etc.
But once a customer is onboarded, the experience often narrows to the specific product they’ve signed up for, leaving little room for exploring broader financial needs.
It’s time for a shift. Financial institutions (and everyone else) should take a more holistic approach to customer experience, moving beyond siloed products and treating each customer as a partner in their entire financial journey.
Here are some thoughts on resolving the customer experience paradox:
1. Present Offers as One Company
After a customer becomes part of the ecosystem, the organization should stop viewing them as a product holder and instead as a person (or institution) with evolving needs.
Whether they start with an auto insurance policy or a savings account, their financial or insurance journey doesn’t stop there. See principle of presenting.
A unified, integrated experience can break down the silos between different products. When a customer logs in, they should see a consolidated dashboard that offers insights into not just their current product, but opportunities across the institution’s portfolio. For example, a customer with home insurance could receive suggestions for bundling auto or life insurance, while someone with a checking account could be shown relevant credit card or loan offers.
This holistic approach keeps customers informed about the full range of offerings, making it easier to cross-sell or upsell services that truly meet their needs.
2. Integrate Partner Offers Into the Mix
Both banks and insurance companies are increasingly becoming platforms that offer more than just their core services.
By partnering with other companies, they can offer value-added services that make the customer experience richer and more dynamic. See principle of completion.
For instance, an auto insurance customer might see options for car maintenance services or roadside assistance, seamlessly integrated into their insurance provider’s platform. It’s especially useful during claims. Similarly, a bank could offer financial planning services, health insurance, or fintech tools through partnerships, creating a one-stop financial hub.
Imagine logging into your insurance portal and seeing offers for travel insurance right before booking a vacation, or logging into your bank and seeing investment opportunities and business insurance options.
Partner integrations create a seamless ecosystem, positioning the institution as a central part of the customer’s broader financial life.
3. Personalization Through Roadmap Tools and Follow-Up
To solve the customer experience paradox, personalization shouldn’t stop at simple greetings or generic recommendations.
Financial institutions should guide customers through their journey by offering interactive tools like calculators and roadmaps that help them assess their broader financial or coverage needs.
From there, they can present tailored solutions, impartial advice, and follow up with ongoing recommendations based on customer behavior.
For example, a bank could offer an overall financial health calculator that is integrated into the dashboard and evaluates a customer’s income, savings, debt, and spending. Based on the results, the platform can suggest appropriate products, such as retirement plans, investment accounts, or debt consolidation loans.
Similarly, an insurance company could provide an insurance coverage calculator, allowing customers to input their assets, family situation, and life goals. The tool would then recommend the right mix of home, life, health, and auto policies, helping customers see their insurance portfolio as part of an integrated protection plan.
But the journey doesn’t stop there. Institutions should track customer behavior—whether they are exploring certain products, engaging with specific financial tools, or even revisiting their calculations—and use this data to offer personalized roadmaps. For instance, if a customer frequently uses a retirement calculator, the bank could follow up with targeted content on retirement savings strategies or send personalized advice on maximizing contributions.
By using a roadmap and big picture assessments to map out the customer’s financial or insurance journey, and following up with personalized recommendations and insights, institutions can create a truly engaging experience that evolves with the customer’s needs over time.
This makes personalization more than just a one-time engagement—it becomes a dynamic, ongoing conversation that anticipates the customer’s next steps.
4. Rethinking Technology Architecture
To truly embrace a customer-first mindset, it’s not enough to change business processes.
The underlying technology architecture must evolve to support a holistic view of the customer across all products and services.
A customer belongs to the organization, not to a product.
A critical piece of this transformation is the implementation of a Customer Data Platform (CDP). This platform allows organizations to consolidate customer data from multiple sources—whether it’s banking accounts, insurance policies, or even partner services—into a unified profile. By having a 360-degree view of the customer, the organization can offer integrated and personalized experiences.
When a customer engages with any product or service, the CDP can feed real-time insights to update the “roadmap” we discussed in the previous section, and recommend the right advice or actions.
In addition to a CDP, the overall tech architecture must be flexible and modular, catering additionally to a customer relationship view. Whether a customer is exploring new products or simply managing existing ones, the system should respond to their broader financial journey, not just the confines of a specific product.
This requires a rethink of how data flows across departments, breaking down product silos, and ensuring that all customer interactions are viewed in context.
Lastly, AI-driven analytics play a crucial role in continuously learning from customer behaviors and updating recommendations.
Building the Future of Financial Services
Whether it’s banking or insurance, customers don’t think in silos, and neither should the institutions that serve them.
By breaking down barriers between products, integrating partner offers, and personalizing based on customer exploration and overall portfolio, we can shift from being product providers to trusted advisors for our customers’ entire financial journey.
Let’s solve the customer experience paradox.