Data overload has to be overcome to fuel the four components of TX: CX, EX, UX and MX in the region.
The South-east Asian region is home to some of the world’s largest online marketplaces in some of the fastest-growing economies such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.
As this rapid growth continues, and fintech organizations and banks continue to facilitate innovation in the financial sector, today’s customers are expecting something coined as the “total experience” (TX).
Gartner analysts define the “total experience” as encompassing four components: customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), user experience (UX) and multi-experience (MX). TE is the seamless, intuitive, personalized, frictionless, digital, pre, and post-purchase engagements that build loyalty and increase wallet share.
Consumers will expect organizations to deliver TX, and this can be achieve through two technological ways.
Two approaches to TX
The first approach is to enhance the digital customer experience by helping organizations overcome information overload and using it to their advantage. Tech savvy customers expect to access financial services through digital channels such as mobile apps and online platforms. Financial institutions can improve the digital customer experience by investing in UI/UX and intuitive digital interfaces, providing personalized and relevant content, and ensuring that the digital channels are secure and agile with minimum downtime.
Another approach is to leverage AI and ML to personalize the customer experience. AI and ML can be used to analyze customer data and provide tailored recommendations and services. According to Ernst and Young, the integration of chatbots and other virtual assistants with human advice will be so seamless by 2030 that customers will not discern any differences between them. Robotic process automation can also be used to improving the efficiency of financial institutions by relieving employees of mundane and repetitive tasks and therefore, ensuring improved delivery of customer experience with faster and increasingly seamless services.
The TX drive in SEA
The abovementioned strategies are increasingly becoming the norm, and in the future, financial services institutions will have to be more predictive and customized in shaping their products and solutions for the market. For example:
- In Indonesia, the transition to digital payments has been accelerated by the mandatory national QR code system (the Quick Response Code Indonesia Standard, or QRIS) to encourage interoperable digital payments among the country’s 65m micro- to small-and-medium- sized enterprises, consumers and other mainstream financial services.
- In Malaysia, the Financial Sector Blueprint charts the future direction of the financial system and it has highlighted electronic payments as one of the nine key focus areas. Since then, Bank Negara Malaysia has been working to accelerate the migration to e-payments, moving towards a cashless society and broadening financial inclusion. QR Payment has been identified as the catalyst towards achieving that goal.
- In Singapore, more consumers are adapting to Open Banking through the launch of the Financial Industry API register in 2017. The country has opted for a hybrid approach to the initiative, including both the market and the government in establishing the open banking ecosystem.
Countries within SEA are also exploring cross-border payment systems in local currencies through the use of QR Codes. Countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines are all in various stages of progress in commercially launching this feature.
Digital competition intensifies
In the future, financial services players will try to embed themselves with solutions to create better opportunities, such as:
- Insurance players offering low-priced insurance plans on airlines or railway tickets
- banking players offering attractive interest rates, EMI options or buy-now-pay-later services on e-commerce websites
- financial services players will fund market expansion possibilities through providing smaller loans and more modular insurance plans to cater to a wider base of customers
The future of the financial services market is undoubtedly exciting, but it is imperative that the SEA industry players invest in digital technologies and data analytics to meet customer demands and offer a total experience.
