How an Insider Personalizes Every Step of the Banking Customer Journey

An interview with Rejeesh Ramachandran, senior vice president, head of strategic business architecture and customer insights at TD Bank, about how banks can better compete through custom offerings at every stage of the customer journey. 

—

Customers have come to expect personalized experiences every time they interact with their bank. Financial institutions (FIs) that can meet and exceed those expectations have the opportunity to better compete, Ramachandran said. He said he sees banks deepening existing relationships and winning new customers with an expanding data arsenal, by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and data science capabilities to deliver the kind of connected, personalized experiences that span across channels. These expectations also span the life stages customers move through, such as paying for their child’s education, buying a first home or enjoying their retirement. 

While customers demand tools that streamline their financial relationships and increasingly use open banking capabilities via third-party services, they may be leery of sharing additional information or outside data with a single FI. These varying comfort levels mean it is vital for banks to prioritize customer preferences as they help them make wealth-building decisions.

While there are many inherent complexities, the essence of personalization is simple. It comes down to defining what is right for the customer and presenting it in the most ideal way, according to Ramachandran. Personalization also requires collaboration between business, data, marketing and technology teams, but he said it is best to start with the customer first and allow their needs to guide how FIs decide on which technologies and capabilities best address them. Merely acquiring technology will not enable banks to compete. Ultimately, it is the implementation of personalization with these technologies that will differentiate them, Ramachandran said. 

TD Bank approaches personalization with principles designed to ascertain the needs of customers and colleagues. These principles include understanding that personalization continues to be an ever-evolving concept, for example. The bank does not set out on costly, multi-year transformations, but instead focuses on implementing its plan one channel at a time. This enables the bank to rapidly test, learn and adjust as it expands across channels and business lines. 

Ramachandran said a key to TD Bank’s success was focusing on typical use cases and more prevalent scenarios instead of on edge use cases that might make for good stories but rarely happen. The bank also invested in its own front-line colleagues to ensure they had clear, actionable insights to personalize in-person interactions.