Transforming member communication: Addressing challenges and solutions for Building Societies
In a financial landscape where cutting costs to maintain a positive jaws ratio and embracing digital transformation is the norm, what happens when you're different from your typical financial institution? What if your focus is building and nurturing long-lasting member relationships, as with mutually owned entities like building societies?
Transformation programs remain relevant for building societies as member demands evolve rapidly. However, the emphasis is on meeting genuine needs rather than using transformation to cover planned redundancies. Digital solutions are still paramount, but they serve as a choice of channels rather than a pretext for branch closures.
Challenges for Building Societies
Nevertheless, this unique approach also comes with its challenges. Building societies, prioritising member satisfaction over profits, often operate with minimal IT transformation budgets compared to profit-driven institutions. Additionally, smaller teams face immense pressure to maintain existing legacy systems, making change seem like an uphill battle.
Any change undertaken carries additional risk for building societies. Unlike profit-driven institutions that can experiment and pivot quickly, building societies must invest their resources wisely and aim for success from the outset. The key lies in careful prioritisation, focusing on areas significantly impacting the member experience.
Critical role of customer communications
Building societies are deeply committed to member connections. Yet, they often falter in the final mile—delivering outdated, paper-based correspondence to explain actions, confirm instructions, and remind members of their balances. These communications constitute the largest portion of all touchpoints and offer a substantial opportunity for enhancing the member experience. In today's world, customers expect to engage through their preferred digital or physical channels. However, only 43% of respondents in our survey* reported that their financial institution consistently met this expectation.
Personalisation, meaningful content, and understandability are now essential, driven by Consumer Duty rules. Yet, our survey revealed that only 8% of customers* could correctly answer a question after reading a banking overdraft communication. Building societies relying on legacy communication technologies and in-house solutions must meet these expectations due to limited budgets.
Transforming customer communications
The outcome is communications that lack value and generate failure demand. Members need help comprehending the content they receive, leading to calls to contact centres or visits to branches to resolve queries or concerns. These costs become ingrained in annual operating plans and overlooked in transformation programs. The absence of a coordinated omnichannel solution means that paper-based expenses and poor communication have persisted as an accepted norm.
Communication transformation is no longer a choice; it is imperative, as legacy communication platforms hinder broader transformation efforts. Building societies must prioritise it to rectify this weak link in the member care chain and establish a central point in a transformed member experience.
Critical questions for transformation
This shift raises several critical questions about the transformed state's nature and purpose:
- Do you grasp the impact of communication touchpoints on all member journeys? How can you align communications with member experience programs while transforming?
- How can you craft highly personalised and meaningful communications across physical and digital channels, ensuring swift and painless adjustments?H
- How can you minimise the impact on existing IT teams, streamlining implementation, migration, and ongoing management?
The solution
Answering these questions is simplified with the Quadient Inspire suite, the leading communication management solution for enterprises of all sizes. Trusted by financial institutions worldwide, with a 96% customer satisfaction rating** award-winning journey mapping and communication capabilities are relied upon for their excellence. Learn more about our cloud-based solution here.
*The Consumer Duty Report, 2023, Signal The Consumer Duty 2.0 Report
**CSAT Report, 2022, Quadient https://resources.quadient.com/m/29925fce3549a892/original/Quadient-Inspire-CSAT-Report-Infographic-UK-EN.pdf
