Understanding the changing behaviours of consumers and meeting evolving expectations

By Chris Crespo, Head of Digital Direction, Group Digital, Nordea

What, for you, are the benefits of attending a conference like the ‘X-Tech Europe Summit’ and what have attendees learnt from your session?

Change in our industry is being driven primarily by customers. Customer expectations, behaviours and aspirations are pushing companies across industries to transform. In financial services we are no longer in control of the customer expectation and we are having to catch up to the sleeker and frictionless experiences that companies outside finance are now treating their customers to. What can banks do to face the challenge of relentless change and to stay on top of what customers are now demanding from them? My session focused on providing engaging examples of how the future is nothing like the past and discussing some of the approaches that Nordea is taking to continue to meet customer needs.

How can risk professionals best understand the changes in behaviours of consumers and focus efforts to meet their evolving expectations?

Companies need to understand that to stay ahead of disruption they need to let go. They must let go of the strategies that have so far taken them to where they are today. They need to let go of their assumptions about their industry, they need to let go of their experience of past success and realise that the rules of the game have changed. Only those companies that successfully learn to unlearn will be able to keep up with the pace of change and develop the sharp responsiveness needed to respond to disruption.

How can institutions ensure their products and offerings are continuously updated and aligned with customer expectations?

Assuming you know your customers is probably one of the deadliest mistakes a company can make. Ensuring continuous relevance requires establishing an ongoing dialogue with customers, testing products and services and doing an awful lot of experimentation to inform decisions. The winners will not be those that can launch the killer product, but those that can morph and evolve their product portfolio faster and more frequently to keep up with change. Adaptability is key.

What are the challenges and opportunities in applying AI to monitoring customer expectations?

AI presents great opportunities to process vast amounts of data to generate hindsights and insights about changes in customers preferences and behaviours. However the most exciting potential use of AI is concerned with identify patterns of behaviour early enough to generate foresights that can predict the likelihood of a customer’s next decision. This will be fundamental in personalising the customer experience and in anticipating customers needs. Challenges however still remain for companies to organise and structure their data in a way that is democratised for broad organisational use and of sufficient quality to make accurate predictive models. Regulation in the west and the ability to reassure customers that their data will be kept safe also pose a big challenge. For customers to be willing to part with their data, companies will need to be able to develop new and compelling value propositions that will make it worth it for customers.

What technology or evolution do you predict will be of greatest impact over the next twelve months?

Technology is only a tool for scaling and automation. Its impact is best seen when it’s properly applied or combined with other techniques and methods. We are all tired from hearing the same buzz words, AI, Cloud, Blockchain, etc. But this is because so far we have focused on establishing the baseline, capabilities and infrastructure to use these technologies, with very few case studies on how they have been applied. I believe that when combined with the vast body of knowledge we have acquired on behavioural economics and behavioural science; data analytics and predictive modelling can completely change the essence of banks. The opportunity is there for banks to transform their business models from Financial service providers, to concierges that are able to help customers navigate life. This in conjunction with open banking has the potential to dramatically change the landscape of services that bank provides and most importantly could dramatically shift the role a bank plays in their customers life. Whether this can be done in the next 12 months, remains to be seen.