Customer Engagement 2.0

When at the Forrester Financial Marketing event in New York, I had the pleasure to meet with Alyson Clarke, a principal Analyst at Forrester.  We sat together to discuss and share some ideas about Online Advice Tools. We talked about collaborative tools, simple tools like financial calculators, product selectors, and advice tools. She brought her analyst perspective and I shared my perspective as a technology vendor building richer interface solutions to many of the financial institutions.

Alyson’s take is that people are desperate for financial advice and that their needs are not met today. “Firms should focus on delivering a better customer experience starting by giving clients access to financial advice”, she told me. “The need for advice is amplified by new and complex taxes, pension reforms, turbulent markets, and complicated financial products. Most people can’t afford expert advice so most of them are shifting to the Internet in search for advice.” But advice delivery has not caught up.  Sure you can view your accounts, access general information, apply for a credit card or for a mortgage, and do some transactions, but where is the advice - the personal touch that people need – the collaboration?

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Steve Furman found out that an elaborate multi-channel campaign does not necessarily work. Mellon Investment asked him to confirm his tax payer identification number (TIN), by either phone or internet. However, he eventually had to print a PDF document, fill it out by hand, and use USPS to get it back to Mellon.

What went wrong?

On the Internet, the regular login worked, but he was locked out of his account when he was asked to repeat the credentials when confirming his TIN.

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