Customers Expect Banks to Deliver the Same Convenience as Ecommerce Players

Michelle Prance, CEO of Mettle – NatWest Group says design thinking is a skill banking CX leaders need to ensure a seamless user experience across channels, delivering personalised, simple, and trustworthy experiences for customers. 

Banks tend to think in terms of products and channels, but customers are usually thinking about the experience as a whole.

If you could magic wand your way out of one CX pain point, what would it be? Michelle Prance, CEO of Mettle – NatWest Group said she would put products and channels as second priority on every BFSI leader’s mind, and put customer journeys first. 

Prance is a specialist in delivering technology enabled transformation in customer facing businesses. Michelle joined NatWest in 2021 and is currently the CEO of Mettle – NatWest’s fully digital integrated finance platform designed for small business owners.

“Start-ups and small businesses, by their nature, are fast-moving. They need to get paid quickly and, importantly, need time to work on their business to help them grow. That’s why they need a financial partner to make the business-admin side of it easier for them. Big banks have traditionally not been able to meet these needs very well, and NatWest was like that too, until Mettle was built,” said Prance.

Mettle is specifically tailored to assist self-employed individuals in swiftly establishing a business bank account. Its customers have the convenience of sending and receiving invoices on the fly, along with receiving an estimate of their potential liabilities. Moreover, Mettle integrates seamlessly with accounting software such as FreeAgent, which is bundled with a Mettle account.

Prance spoke with CXM Today about the changing customer expectations, how technology has changed the role of banking leaders and more.

Full interview:

How have you seen customer expectations evolve?

We’ve all been privy to the digital age and how it’s made things easier to use. We now have more choices and we look for immediate responses and expect personalised experiences. It’s also easier to switch if we don’t like something or unfortunately experience bad service. That’s why banking has had to change to keep up with customer needs – customers expect us as a bank to provide the same kinds of experiences they get when they interact with Netflix, Apple or Amazon.

How has technology changed the role of banking leaders?

We’ve needed to get more technical for sure – it’s not okay to leave that to someone else anymore. Everything is now powered by technology. We’ve also needed to embrace design thinking – user experience across all channels needs to be orchestrated so that we can deliver personalised, simple, and trustworthy experiences.  

We’ve all experienced a poorly designed user interface or received a piece of communication that you can tell was automated. We need to be better than that, so we need to understand what our customers want and how our end-to-end customer journeys are delivering against that ambition.

What is the future of the bank branch in your opinion?

As with many industries, most people are shifting to mobile and online banking, because it’s faster and easier to manage their financial lives. However, digital solutions aren’t right for everyone or every situation, so I think bank branches will continue to play an important role, particularly where they allow local businesses to come together and connect.

If you could magic wand your way out of one CX pain point in the BFSI industry what would it be?

Banks tend to think in terms of products and channels, but customers are usually thinking about the experience as a whole. To deliver great banking services, we must build products that are simple and easy to understand, which means putting customer journeys at the front of our minds when starting a new project.

If you could create a new metric to increase CX, how would you go about it?

I believe that if a product or service is great you will tell your colleagues, associates and friends. So, I’m most interested in using insights to understand the customers we keep because they love our services enough to refer them to friends and family. That means we need to understand what’s important for our customers and understand what we need to change when it goes wrong. Ultimately, I want this to be a metric we look at every day and discuss with the leadership team.

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