The Way for Innovating Banks to Go – Tip 6: Take the Road to Channel Innovation

Tip 6: Take the Road towards channel innovation

To most, banking transformation is synonymous with channel innovation. And although channels have evolved beyond imagination, there’s still room for innovation.

By and large, the objective of channel innovation has been to “modify” delivery channels so that they support banks’ business goals and enable customers to perform more functions. In the bargain, all channels have been made available to all customers, which is intuitively sub-optimal from a resourcing perspective. Rather, if banks allocate a primary “free” channel to each customer, based on his or her profile, preference or context of use, and charge a nominal fee for using another, they can rationalise the load on their channel infrastructure as well as earn incremental revenue. Once web 2.0, VOIP and IPTV join the mainstream, the efficient management of delivery channels will become all the more crucial. To achieve that, banks must unify channel-related processes while making them more robust, and ensure that customer-facing employees on every channel are adequately trained to do their jobs.

That being said, one must remember that the onus of delivering a great customer experience lies most with the delivery channel. And with the ‘segment of one’ concept extended to channels, channel penetration can be optimized as well. Greater personalisation of services, consistency in delivery and value-addition through “right advising” and “right selling” are all part of the equation.