Hyper-personalization: The key to customer growth in banking

Caroline Béguin: So why do you think it is important for banks to focus on the individual needs of their customers? 

Shalien Kishore: So as I said, each customer is an individual, and everything that they do within banking, that has a huge importance, value, and impact on their lives. It’s all about the money that they possess or they want to possess. And while the tech world is dominated by AI conversations, our end customers still are overwhelmed by tech advancements, by the possibilities of financial services and products. And they are scared of cyber frauds because in an ever-increasingly digital world, it’s very easy to scam anyone. So with all of that in mind the banks of the future will need to be the enablers of customers’ financial well-being. And when we talk about banking, it cannot be any more the product-centric version than this, these are the products we can offer. It has to be more aligned to the customer’s needs, the solutions that they’re expecting from a financial service provider. As an example, we talk about mortgages. It sounds like a very heavy word, but the moment you translate it into something like, “I’m gonna help you buy a home. I’m gonna help you renovate it, move into it,” it becomes simpler for people to understand that this is how a bank can help me. Or when we talk about savings, helping you secure your future depending on your life stage, your age. That’s, that’s the way banks need to approach personalization. They’re always serving an individual, and for each individual, that banking is personal. 

Caroline Béguin: You are talking about humans’ well-being to approach personalization, and humans like to be entertained. So how do you think technology can help make banking services more user-friendly? 

Shalien Kishore: Oh, we have, we have a lot of ground to cover there. So in fact, we call it the baseline experience. It still has to be excellently done. It still has to be delightful to use. And it would include, number one, the ease of use for the frequent activities: bill payments, money transfers. We wanna simplify what is complex, so things like onboarding, which are long user journeys. We want responsive layouts where, depending on the posture of a handheld device, a mobile phone or tablet, it adjusts the layout itself. And same for resizing a browser window. And it also includes adaptive layouts. So for example, for a large screen, you show the list and a details view simultaneously. But for a mobile phone, it’s one thing at a time because it’s a small screen size. And that is all about designing for usability, and this is for various scenarios that a customer might find themselves in. And that’s like the baseline for all online activities for any further personalization or value addition you wanna do on top of it. 

Caroline Béguin: And beyond delightful features, what are some ways banks can make their products feel more personal to each customer? 

Shalien Kishore: So the easiest way is a segmented personalization, where we’re talking about one-to-many customization. We group our users into broad categories based on demographics, based on location, or any shared characteristics for that matter. So for the customer, this is like, the bank is treating me as a long-term customer, and it feels like a continued engagement. So for example, my landing page could be personalized based on what I’m using the most frequently. For a freelancer, it could be expense tracking. For a customer who’s checking their credit card balance every day it could be the credit card widget that’s on the top. Similarly, for senior users, it could be an easy mode where we oversimplify the UI, like larger font sizes, simpler navigation, and a very lean feature set that gives only the key activities and balances for older customers. So it’s, in the end, all about the flexibility of different types of usage of a bank’s products and services. And progressively, we can enhance and provide experience for users no matter what device or platform they’re using. So it’s always about the flexibility, the familiarity, and intuitiveness that we can enable with segmented personalization.

Caroline Béguin: Can you give an example of how a bank might adapt its services based on a customer’s behavior? 

Shalien Kishore: Of course, that is actually the next level of personalization. The user experience adapts based on the past transactions, the browsing history. Basically, understanding the customer’s past behavior to anticipate the future. I can give examples like if I detect a loan has been paid up or a salary has increased. Basically, I detect a cash flow improvement. And there, we can nudge the customer to improve their money habits. “Congratulations. It seems you got a salary increment. Would you like to roll this cash flow into a high-yield account?” And for example, if a user spends a lot of money on airlines or hotels abroad, they can be offered a travel card with cashback or forex fee waivers. Now, this becomes a personalized product for the customer based on my past behavior. And this can be done by the banks with a perpetual KYC and a combination of transaction history. This is, again, designing for sincerity towards a customer’s well-being, and it’s also designing for delight. 

Caroline Béguin: Great. What do you think about real-time alerts? How could they improve a customer’s experience with their bank? Wouldn’t it feel intrusive? 

Shalien Kishore: If done well, it will not be intrusive or creepy. It will be helpful. And when we talk about contextual personalization, this is actually the highest level. It is the hyper-personalization we keep talking about. It’s about tailored content, recommendations, any dynamic information based on the current event, the current location, current time, your device. And this gives customers the feeling that this bank is a trusted and multi-generational financial partner. And how it does that? A simple example could be nudges for duplicate transactions that you had: “We’ve detected a duplicate transaction from vendor X. Would you like to dispute it?” It could be rising subscriptions, like, “Your Spotify bill is 13 euros this month. It’s three euros more than last month.” It gives the feeling that the bank cares for me as a customer and it’s translating the financial wisdom into something that I as a customer can use. A sophisticated example could be a small business owner. When they’re experiencing a cash flow squeeze, they’re offered a line of credit. So what at the end we’re trying to do is we are trying to evolve the customer experience based on customer’s needs, and this could be for each individual, for each business as they grow. 

Caroline Béguin: So what are the benefits of offering tailored financial advice to customers at different stages of their lives? 

Shalien Kishore: So as I was just talking about, each stage needs a different outlook on finances. When I’m in my first job, I don’t know how finance works. I don’t know what to do with a lot of money. I might be spending, overspending. I might not be saving at all. And that’s where the bank, as the enabler of financial well-being, can help me understand what I’m going, where I’m going wrong and help me course-correct on my financial journey. Because the bank has a treasure trove of understanding of my transaction history, my behavioral patterns, my life choices, essentially. So it is in a position to be that financial guide all through. 

Caroline Béguin: And why should personalization in banking be seen as an ongoing process rather than a one-time change? 

Shalien Kishore: Because life is ongoing. Life grows. So personalization is in a sense about determining those influential moments, the points in a user’s life where they make a choice, they make a decision, and then presenting relevant products with a clear call to action. And that’s what I meant earlier when I said personalization done well. The answer would lie in combining behavioral data, my current context, and my declared preferences, so that it doesn’t sound creepy, it doesn’t feel creepy. It is helpful to me, and I trust my bank to be taking me along on my financial path and being that guide to lead me forward. 

Caroline Béguin: Thank you so much, Shalien, for sharing your time and your insights. 

Shalien Kishore: Thank you very much, Caroline. It’s wonderful talking to you.