As digitalisation continues to be a priority for firms, they are looking at their customer communication management technology as a critical piece of their infrastructure, according to Doxim vice president of sales, financial services Scott Biel.
Customer communication has always been important to wealth managers. People have trusted them with their money and retirement, so they need to ensure statements are sent accurately and in a timely manner. However, pressures have increased for firms to adapt and meet the new demands of their customers, which include personalised experiences and quicker access to information.
Doxim was founded in 2000 by Chris Rasmussen, who currently serves as the chairman of the board. Rasmussen created the business after seeing a need for financial services firms to leverage technology and provide an omni-channel experience for customers. The goal was to help customers collate data from various sources within their customer communication management (CCM) ecosystems, normalise it, process it and create documents for customer communications such as client statements, trade confirmations, and tax slips.
Institutions often had a lot of data coming from various sources and complex operational systems, but they failed to have a single view of their customer communications. While this is improving, it is still a problem today. Doxim was designed to give a better view of customers and tools to manage them.
Improving customer communications has become of great importance to firms over the past few years. There is a lot of pressure on firms to ensure they improve their experiences for customers. A recent report from Deloitte claimed customercentric companies are 60% more profitable than those not focused on the customer. Biel said, “Covid has accelerated the need for improved customer communications and created a tipping point.”
This has happened because, “consumers have come to demand and expect great customer experiences.” Tech giants like Amazon have created excellent customer experiences, and now customers want the same wherever they go, including wealth management.
Competition is fierce within wealth management, and in order to compete with disruptive competitors, firms need to be cost effective and efficient in their digital experiences and customer engagement. There is a continued shifting of sands in the wealth management space and there are so many ways investors can do business. Direct investing platforms are letting investors open accounts in ten minutes, quickly access statement summaries, and so much more. Advisors and management firms need to replicate this. Biel stated that firms know this and have recognised the key to providing the best customer experiences is by improving communications and ensuring CCM is pivotal in their operations and their client experience strategy.
“All wealth firms have realised they’ve got to react to this and look at how they communicate with their customers. This is from the onboarding process, all the way to things like, statements and confirms, and tax. They need to respond to the demands of the marketplace, and they have to continue to help their advisors be able to tell a great story to their investor customers, so they can maintain wallet share with those customers.”
Biel believes opportunities to upsell, cross sell, build loyalty and create long-term customer value have never been better, thanks to digitalisation, but “at the same time, the risk has never been greater.” It is so easy to switch providers nowadays and if a customer has a bad experience, they are likely to move to a different provider. A study from PwC found that 73% of consumers claim good experiences is a main driver behind their brand loyalty.
“Social media platforms and information sharing means bad news about not delivering those experiences, or someone’s bad experience can be shared so readily now. Perceptions can grow so quickly about whether you as a firm are doing that well, or not. There’s a tremendous amount of risk that if you don’t do this well, you can have high customer churn.”
The reverse is also true. If a company has a great customer experience, people will let others know and customers will stick around.
How Doxim helps firms prepare for the future
Doxim claims to be the most robust, single source platform for customer communication management in the market, and has the widest array of functionality and features set within to help customers self-care.
On top of that, Doxim layers industry-leading consultation to support firms with their CCM. These consultants are experts on customer experience and can provide clients with guidance in implementing the best strategies to encourage customers to take the leap from print communication to digital.
While digitalisation efforts have accelerated over the past year, not all firms are being as aggressive. Biel said he was speaking with one large bank that said it had around 70% digital adoption, but another that was still around 20%. Doxim is designed to help companies at all stages ensure their digital communications are where they want them to be.
Biel described a new client – a top 20 North American bank – that selected Doxim’s CCM platform for their wealth line of business. Their goal was to increase the digital engagement with their clients to help reduce the costs of sending documents via mail. Doxim is helping to drive efficiency and explore alternative communication methods to provide customers with client statements. In addition to that, they are exploring tools like personalised videos to ensure the customer has even more value from going digital.
This is not to say all consumers want communications to be exclusively digital. Print is still around and is not looking to go anywhere soon. What Biel has noticed is that consumers want both print and digital forms of communication. Firms need to be sure they can do things how their customers want it done. This is why Doxim also offers wealth managers the tools to manage their print communications. Clients can easily design documents, with full customisation, and ensure their correspondence is the same in print, mobile, email and web.
As more people engage with digital communication, the need for print will likely decrease. This is why a focus on digitalisation is core to Doxim’s plans for the future. The company will also continue to explore the use of AI and machine learning technology and fine tune them so they can add even more value to the offering.
“We will continue to innovate and bring advanced solutions to our customers that help them continue to push the envelope and to make sure that they are in a position to, not only today but into the future, offer the best of the best in terms of experiences for their customers.”
Doxim was recently named in this year’s WealthTech100 list. Download the free list here.
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