With the Shared Responsibility Framework (SRF) rules fast approaching, Singaporean regulated companies are beginning to look at how they can update their processes to continue being compliant once they become responsible for consumer losses due to electronic fraud techniques such as phishing. A key change that will be required is the ability to communicate with end customers in a radically different way than many businesses do today.
Unfortunately, legacy customer communication management (CCM) products are often limited in their capabilities, creating blockers or forcing expensive workarounds to meet both customer expectations and the SRF. These platforms, while slow and inefficient, have survived for many years simply because there was always a compelling reason to prioritise spending in other areas such as websites and mobile applications, leaving old-fashioned but existing capabilities to stagnate.
The new regulations are yet another nail in the coffin of outdated systems that no longer support the businesss, requiring them to be replaced with comprehensive solutions that support future compliance challenges and create differentiation from competitors.
When considering how to succeed in a post-SRF world, Singaporean enterprises would be wise to look into the following areas.
You care about your customers, so show it in your interactions
The SRF requires that regulated financial and telecommunication institutions communicate with their customers to educate them on electronic fraud, as well as on specific risks or issues that may have been identified. Traditionally, this would have been completed with a basic newsletter-style advice explaining how customers can fall foul of criminals, followed by simple electronic alerts warning that a potential fraud has been found and that the customer should call to find out more.
Legally, meeting the new rules in this old-fashioned manner will suffice. However, doing so shows a lack of empathy around such a worrying topic, and the message is likely to be received poorly.
Some legacy CCM products may be stretched to meet even these simple requirements, forcing the use of other channel-specific platforms to cover for their shortcomings. To thrive, companies should not begin by looking at what they can do with their existing limited systems. Instead, they should begin by assessing the customer experience. How are the many different types of customers likely to receive such messages, and what they are likely to want to do next? Mapping ideal customer journeys for each of these personas without being constrained by the current failing technology will show where the key gaps lie, and allow those gaps to be closed with better communications once modern CCM technology is deployed.
These revised communications should deliver the maximum amount of information in a manner that is guaranteed to resonate with each individual customer, without any manual intervention. Personalising through a switch in the tone of voice, or changing the advice offered based on the digital maturity of the customer or the risk level of their situation can make a huge difference. Done correctly, these mandatory communications can deepen relationships, by delivering an often-difficult message with clarity and consideration for every recipient.
Delivery at the speed of the customer
The creation of a highly personalised, meaningful message may be critical to educating customers and developing positive experiences, but the speed and channel of delivery is just as important.
Traditionally, communications were delivered in batches – a holdover from the days when everything was print-related and needed to be collected from the print centre once per day by a mailing company. While many CCM systems allow for on demand delivery today, they are often limited in their performance and the choice of channels that can be used.
Surviving in a post-SRF world requires that the alerts be delivered to customers quickly, so collating a day's worth of alerts and then delivering them in a batch is unlikely to help. Institutions should aim to deploy single solutions that can handle the full needs of the enterprise across the whole range of digital channels.
To go beyond simply surviving and to begin to thrive, businesses must go further. Modern, more secure channels that customers know are guaranteed to be free from fraud such as smartphone push notifications, become much more important here. When used properly, these channels also offer two-way interactions, allowing the company to send an important, highly personalised message immediately and for the customer to then press pre-defined buttons to respond.
Deliver, and then deliver again
Anti-phishing and other fraud communications are often of the highest level of importance. Just firing a message on a single channel and then forgetting it is unlikely to be received well by the customer, especially if they were unable to access that channel for any reason. Doing so using the excuse that the current legacy systems weren’t good enough to track the receipt of the message is also likely to incur the wrath of the regulator.
Instead, businesses should seek out CCM solutions that track important digital messages across all the channels, and incorporate capabilities that allow critical communications to be resent via different routes automatically if they weren’t received or read when delivered using the customers’ preferred channel.
Simplify and consolidate to succeed
Meeting all of these needs may seem like an unrealistic and expensive task, and this would certainly be true using the legacy CCM base that most companies own. With the status quo, the IT development effort is likely to be duplicated across numerous channel-specific CCM systems and at least one digital platform, with copious amounts of internally built code being created to orchestrate the business requirements as the data flows between all of these products.
Instead, enterprises should consider investing in their future by consolidating onto a modern omnichannel CCM platform that will automatically be able to handle all SRF communications, as well as empower their future business and compliance needs. This single solution simplifies customer communications across the entire company, while offering significant cost savings for the future.
Companies that invest in simplifying routes to success are likely to find that meeting forthcoming legislation such as the Shared Responsibility Framework is easy, giving them time to focus on exceeding the rules to delight their customers and improve longer term profitable relationships. Those that seek to minimise investment and do as little as possible to meet a minimum interpretation of those same rules are likely to disappoint their customers and move further behind both current customer and future legislative expectations.
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