Human Engagement

in Digital Banking
by Nripendra Acharya

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Human Engagement in Digital Banking
The fastest scaling parts of the financial services sector are those driven by shifting
customer expectations. The world of instant service and provision that Amazon
has made the norm - is the same world that financial institutions live in.
A world of extremely mobile customers.

New channels present unique opportunities for banks to
strengthen the relationship they have with their customers.
Financial Institutions like any other organizations need
to engage with customers to build long term trusted
relationships through digital channels.
It is crucial to provide guidance and assistance both
directly to a customer (digitally), and then also augment a
team member (in-branch) with relevant information. Banks
that present the best products to each customer, leverage
relationship-centric strategy (“Sales through Service”).

This means creating deep human levels of engagement
that digital channels have yet to address. Namely, this
means moving beyond a transaction experience and
a commoditized relationship.
As banks look to bring back a human level of
engagement and assistance to digital channels, as well
as assistance to branch staff with complex products,
and multidimensional customer journeys, the following
become key:
Compliance, Regulations: Auditable and Secure
Engagement with contextually useful information
that is consistent and compliant
Providing financial packages that are valuable
to the customer
In understanding how these themes can fit into the key
challenges around humanizing digital banking journeys,
intelligent digital assistants will be introduced as a
strategic framework and tool. Digital assistants overlay
contextual conversation with financial products and
advice: providing customers with an experience centered
around their needs.
At the end of the day, customers will continue to
self-select to the bank that provides the least amount
of friction and the most relevant support and guidance.
A strong retail deposit base and the efficiency of new
customer acquisition will be directly correlated to digital
engagement.

Consistency across all touchpoints In-branch

Discovery: Asking questions first and not

In the moment Relevant

making assumptions relevance financial

packages

Remedy digital Guidance Auditable

disintermediation interactions
The banks that invest in fostering a human connection—
Ask need-based Humanized Active
that empowers customers to understand financial questions engagement compliance
framework

products and bundles in the context of their own needs Initial

consideration Learning Training
Financial
Decision

in real time, will develop long term relationships. Collect behavioral Assist and train
meta-data branch staff
There are a number of elements:

Training Augmentation

Omnichannel
Augmentation Customer
Journey

Guidance Digital

Learning

Figure 1: Digital Assistants serve as a framework in which banks

can leverage Guidance, Learning, Augmentation, and Training. On digital
channels, the technology brings a deep human level of engagement
which can be augmented to support in branch staff. As will be explored:
digital assistants can be a crucial tool that should be leveraged from
compliance frameworks to “always-on” marketing initiatives.

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COMPLIANCE, REGULATIONS: AUDITABLE AND SECURE
Preceding any discussion of the potential opportunities
with emerging technologies, is a discussion of regulatory
compliance.
This is because at the core of a bank’s relationship with
its customers is the concept of trust. In recent years,
financial institutions have been marred with controversies
and scandals. However, as banks double down on their
compliance and regulatory frameworks, this does not
mean that contextual advice should be shortchanged.
Risk averse institutions do not need to compromise
on customer engagement through innovation.
On the contrary: new technology (particularly digital
assistants) can address and alleviate many of the
challenges that have surrounded regulatory compliance.
Namely:
Passive and ex post facto risk management
and compliance models
Risk controls that are not translated into
(consumer facing) business operations
Branch staff with inadequate compliance playbooks
High risk culture that couples insufficient staff
training and turnover with performance incentives
Finally: Lack of records that can be reviewed
and analyzed for inherent operational risk
Former Group CEO for HSBC Stuart Gulliver, in a
Fortune interview, alluded to the possibility of leveraging
technology to reduce wealth management risk by using
the process of “taking a client through an automated
questionnaire online, and you take the same series of
questions about your monthly outgoings...dependents
(etc.)...and you are actually pointing out the risks.”
He then goes on to describe how this can be done at a
lower cost price with much better investment processes
than “very expensive individuals with the risk of regulatory
fines”.1
Intelligent digital assistants can take this even further.
By mapping predetermined conversational elements
(dialogue, questions, advice) to specific financial products
and guidance, banks can begin to develop an active digital
risk framework. One that sits on the front-line of customer
interaction.
At the core, is the fact that clicks and interactions with
a digital assistant serve as an auditable transcript of
conversation mapped against customer interactions
around financial products.
The solution with digital assistants entails:
Designing conversational Q&A flows with built
in risk management and regulatory compliance
controls
Mapping these risk-averse but customer-centric
conversations against business operations and
financial products
Leveraging this transcript of digital customer
interaction into an internal facing standard and
protocol for bank-staff (particularly as customers
journey from digital to in-branch)
Consolidating takeaways from this transcript
as an invaluable staff onboarding tool, as well
as an ongoing training guide
Auditing interactions and conversations to monitor
and develop active risk management frameworks
This is to say digital assistants and their auditable
transcripts increase risk controls and thus decrease
residual risk.
As we continue to explore the inherent functionalities
that accompany digital assistants: contextualization,
personalization, and customization- there is one other
key factor to keep in mind--by leveraging a solution that
collects no PII from a customer, these experiences can
remain as secure and structured as outlined in each
particular privacy policy.
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ENGAGEMENT
Contextually Useful Guidance that is Consistent and Compliant

Zachary Gipson (former CIO) when describing the
challenge and opportunity of USAA virtual assistant
technology posits the central question as taking human
warmth and asking, “How do we replicate that in a digital
interaction.”2
As banks look to engage their customers with humanized
digital experiences, banks need to deliver useful
guidance. The first step is moving beyond a transactional
experience. In a world of instant value and shifting
customer expectations, transactional experiences develop
into commoditized relationships that are inherently weak.
Customers will self select to the most engaging banking
experience.
Human level engagement starts with first understanding
the context of the customer: What are the needs of the
customer? What are the capabilities of the customer?
Where along the process is the customer? As the saying
goes: “No one wants to get a loan, they want to get a car.”
Financial products and financial guidance exist in
the context of the customer’s lifestyle and needs.
Once a bank understands their customer’s signals,
they can provide relevant and personalized experiences.
An experience that reduces complexity is inherently
engaging. An experience that is personalized and
contextual is empowering. Together, these experiences
bring deep levels of engagement that foster trust.
Intelligent digital assistants not only empower customers,
but the technology also empowers branch staff with insight
First, by leveraging intelligent digital assistants with CRM
systems, banks can equip branch staff with the relevant
information and context for each customer visit.
Bank staff can begin to understand their customers before
their customers even walk through the door. Banks can
also leverage the conversational elements of the optimized
digital assistants as an invaluable internal training tool:
providing both in-branch staff and call centers with
consistent and compliant conversational guidelines,
as discussed in the compliance section.
Contextualize
Understand lifestyle needs
and financial capabilities
Empower Exclusive
In-the-moment Provide personalized
financial guidance experiences
Understand Educate
Collect click-signals Reduce complexity
and insights
Figure 2: To foster humanized digital experiences, banks can leverage
Intelligent digital assistants. By nature, their “always-on” functionality
gives banks an opportunity to first understand the needs and capabilities
of their customers through needs-based questions. Then banks can
empower customers with personal and relevant guidance.

on customer behavior.

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FINANCIAL PACKAGES
Provide value to customers with bundles of product packages and relevant advice
The next step in deep engagement is providing value to
customers.
The anxiety customers associate with financial decisions is
rooted in (1) an overwhelming array of options, and (2) the
long-term and consequential nature of each decision.
Financial packages should coalesce product bundles and
complimentary financial guidance and advice. In the past,
the community banker held a lifetime relationship with
each individual.
By providing product recommendations that took into mind
past financial decisions and future lifestyle aspirations,
bankers could foster trust. Digital channels, when
effectively leveraged with the branch experience, can give
customers and banks this same sort of relationship on a
larger scale.
The challenge:
Help customers (1) spend correctly, (2) invest
strategically, and (3) save wisely
Provide product packages that understand past
financial decisions, and future lifestyle aspirations
A solution, that leverages digital assistants involves:
Connecting conversational flows with different
financial products into packages (for instance
various SMBs looking to grow in size who need
a relevant account, credit, advice packages)
Pairing educational guidance and advice with
various products and product packages
Develop a long-term relationship by providing
“packages” that span a customer lifecycle:
Understanding the click signals that are
associated with a financial action
Capture this information to continually
build a rich customer profile
Augment branch staff with this information
Thus, banks can present customers with lifetime financial
packages that include highly relevant product bundles with
educational advice and guidance.
Over a period of time, each new financial product can
seamlessly fit in with past decisions and shifting customer
needs.
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CONSISTENCY ACROSS ALL TOUCHPOINTS
Augmentation across various channels throughout the customer journey

The transcendent opportunity inherent with digital
transformation is augmentation across channels.
New channels present banks with the opportunity to
develop more intimate relationships with their customers.
This starts with augmenting digital channels with the
in-branch experience: whether it is designing an active
cross channel risk management framework, or providing
customers consistent financial guidance.
One dimensional customer journey mapping is no longer
sufficient, as customers begin on one channel (particularly
mobile) and then continue through the consideration and
sales funnel through different channels.
An analogy for this new journey is a book with chapters
that are on different channels: chapter 1 could be a voice
assistant, chapter 2 could be a mobile app, chapter 5
could be an in-branch experience, and so forth and so on.
Banks that augment each touchpoint will have compelling
and deeply personal customer journeys. They can then
introduce consistency and leverage learnings from one
channel to optimize another (training branch staff with the
insights gleaned from mobile and digital channels).
However, banks that fail to augment their experience will
have discordant customer journeys that are filled with
friction and thus regulatory risk.
Each experience has a compounding effect--so
engagement in the initial phase of the customer journey
will provide the discovery and understanding needed to
continue to engage the customer.
Eventually, each channel will help build the framework of
a network of banking experiences that will help establish
a lifetime relationship built on trust: one where branch
staff will know their customers before the customer walks
through the door. One with digital channels and branch
staff that are trained on customer insights and risk-averse
best practices.

Discovery
Mobile
Evaluation tion Web
alua
Ev
Consid
era
tio
Voice
n
ry
ove

Consideration
Disc

In branch
De
cisio
n

Decision

Figure 3: The omnichannel customer journey has redefined the traditional funnel. Now, each chapter is broken across various channels.
On the right-hand side, this is represented by a new possible customer journey. This highlights the importance of creating touchpoints that work
together and augment each other.3
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DISCOVERY: ASK QUESTIONS TO UNDERSTAND CUSTOMERS
Leverage questions and interactive experiences to collect customer signals

At the core, digital assistants ask questions to understand In turn, banks will have contextual click metadata needed
the needs of the customer. to understand and continue to engage the customer
across various touchpoints. They will also be gathering
By helping customers based on the context of their needs,
the insights needed to augment branch staff with valuable
banks can establish trust. However to help the customer,
information and training. It goes without saying, in 2018,
banks must address disintermediation--which is to say,
each financially-motivated click outside of a banks native
customers should be navigating to the bank’s digital
digital environment is a missed opportunity to understand
channels for financial guidance; NOT relying on Google
and connect with their customers.
(or even a company like NerdWallet) to understand a
bank’s products and financial options. The ultimate goal: providing real time, relevant, and
contextualized assistance to every banking customer,
If customers start the research process within a banks
across channels, throughout the entire customer journey,
environment (or even an interactive offsite banner ad),
while staying compliant and risk-averse.
and receive an “always-on” personalized experience that
clarifies and empowers customers, they will develop the The bank of the future employs a frictionless experience
trust required to continue to make financial decisions with that effectively builds trusted lifetime relationships through
their bank. great engagement and consistency. Voice, mobile, digital,
and in-branch experiences should all coalesce into an
elegant and empowering network.
Footnotes
1. https://amp-timeinc-net.cdn.ampproject.org/c/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2018/08/08/fintech-crypto-trend-vc-invest
2. https://www.americanbanker.com/podcast/zach-gipson-of-usaa-on-testing-virtual-assistants
3. Graphic Design w/ Rebecca Tomino

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