Right now, the world’s leading banks and financial firms are fundamentally changing how they think about their business model. Earlier this year, for example, J.P. Morgan announced that it would pivot to organizing its tech teams around key product offerings as opposed to traditional channels or technologies. Its leadership is emphasizing the importance of being a “customer-centric, agile organization,” as opposed to a bank “encumbered by legacy systems and hierarchy.” In other words, they’re making the product the center of their business and ensuring it delivers an optimized customer experience.
The data bears this out. The vast majority of banking and financial services users have come to expect smooth, seamless, friction-free digital experiences—the same kinds of experiences they’ve grown accustomed to elsewhere in their lives as consumers. For example, Insider Intelligence found that 61% of users would change banks if they were stuck with a poor mobile banking experience. To maintain a happy, growing customer base—and to emerge successful at a time of economic turbulence—financial services firms are embracing a product-led strategy as the answer.
Your product is more than the services it provides
The most forward-thinking banks and firms realize that their products are more than just a set of services. These digital products are the best means for banks to market themselves, promote cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and educate customers about the value they provide and the conveniences they offer.
The key to a product-led strategy is to empower your customers to get the answers and complete the transactions and processes they need with ease, inside your app itself. Whether it’s opening a new account, putting a temporary hold on a card, or applying for a loan, too many key financial processes have for too long been clunky, cumbersome, and a needless drain on customers’ time. Product-led companies are changing this through new innovations and ways of thinking about the user journey.
Empowered customers are happier customers
In-app guides, for instance, can be deployed and targeted to customers at the moment they’re completing a process to seamlessly walk them through next steps. Product analytics allow fintech teams to understand how customers are spending time, where they’re getting stuck, and help them prioritize fixes and new features in their roadmap.
Tech teams discern which user segments would be most interested in new features or product offerings, and then segment those groups to receive targeted in-app notifications and offers. The same is true for collecting feedback at the time and place when it matters most—in the product itself as users are engaging with it. By knowing what customers’ priorities are, banks and financial services organizations can make those same priorities their own.
Happier customers mean a happier, healthier business
At a time of growing inflation, frozen budgets, and a general economic downturn, providing customers with pain-free, intuitive digital experiences in banking and financial services is a priority more than ever before. By leveraging one’s product to automate key steps, provide the right support, and keep a pulse on user sentiment, financial organizations can succeed, and do so without breaking the bank (so to speak). Happier customers are not only less likely to churn, they’re more likely to become champions of the organization, leading to both a more loyal and growing customer base and better business outcomes because of it.
By leveraging their product itself to create a better user experience, banks and financial organizations will come out of this economic climate more resilient, effective, and ready to provide even more value.
Want to learn more about becoming product led? Dive into Pendo and Mind the Product’s new Product-led Certification course here.
