B2B Customer Experience:Why It Matters and Where to Start – A Chief Product Officer’s View

The global Fintech market caught fire in 2019 and is expected to continue to grow. It’s the promise of the market that drives us at FYNXT to continually provide advanced products to our customers. Broker 365, Remit 365, and Wealth 365 are our cloud-based platforms ensuring ultra-fast performance and scalability. Digital front-office mobilizes the digital transformation for financial services firms.

We hit many product milestones and acquired new customers in the last 12 months. It’s safe to say that this was an electric time for the Chief Product Officer! That said, this was also a great time to reflect on what it takes to make great products.

As is apparent, our products are used by other businesses, i.e., the classic B2B scenario. But it’s also apparent that products that go in spaces like financial services, wealth management, and customer account management need a very strong “experience” side. I thought it would be useful to set down my thoughts on this facet. This is my note on the why and how of customer experience in B2B products.

Significance of Customer Experience – Why?

Brand Image and Value

Meeting customer expectations and preferences is imperative to achieve an improved brand image and build strong relationships. In the Fintech industry, the nature of operations and information involved are complex. It is usual for customers to have queries that need immediate resolution. Here, time literally is money. Poor customer engagement at such times can hurt customer relationships.

Enriched customer experience has become a prime focus in the products and services we provide. For instance, Broker 365 is an integrated platform enabling the digital transformation of forex trading houses. The interactive dashboard included on the client portal is specifically designed to drive ease of usage for the customers of these forex houses. Similarly, digital onboarding is super simplified and comes with an intuitive user interface for retail and institutional clients. Our web-based platform is the first of its kind in this space and allows end-customers to access rich information from anywhere through any device. Personalized alerts and notifications also add to the overall customer connection with the financial services provider. Real-time analytics further allow these companies to offer personalized and customized services to their customers easily. These aspects come together to create a positive impact on their reputation and brand value.

Customer Base Expansion and Profits

We use cutting-edge technologies to build cool features that allow the financial services companies we work with to improve customer service and experience. Managed accounts, for instance, help forex brokers to expand their customer base beyond their traditional audience to non-traders as well by making it easy for them to become investors. This allows a win-win all around. Non-traders get to participate in these investment programs, experienced traders and fund managers enjoy incentives, and the company increases customers and volumes. We recognize that such features allow financial services organizations to differentiate themselves, provide elevated levels of responsiveness and service, and improve operational efficiencies.

Our continuous attempts at determining end-user demands and preferences have enabled us to add in features that help our customers expand their client base. They can win more customers, manage existing customers better, drive more transactions on our platforms, and get more revenue.

High Customer Retention Rate

The financial services space is highly-competitive and caters to end-users who are knowledgeable, tech-savvy, and demanding. In that scenario, high levels of customer experience assume a crucial role in driving high customer retention rates. We are conscious of the need to provide for that in our products.

Look at the Digital Front Office for instance. With this, end-customers can make instant payments using our payment aggregators. The solution comes with multiple currency processing coupled with automated current-rate conversions. Of course, in the managed accounts game, the experience the end customer gets is heavily dependent on the experience the fund manager and account manager get. This is why the DFO has several features designed to help them maintain customer engagement and satisfaction rates. Many essential services and tools are integrated at the account management level for quicker and more credible outcomes.

Product features designed as per evolving customer requirements enable high usability of the products, data-driven customer relationship management, and improved customer support. Taken together, these form the perfect recipe to create high customer retention rates.

Measures to Improve Customer Experience

The question is, how to fold customer experience imperatives into products? Let me share how we have done this as an example.

• Continuous customer involvement: In all the products we have developed, we make sure that the customers remain involved throughout the cycle. We carry out customer interactions in the design and analysis phases to obtain insights into pressing pain-points. We also keep the customer involved during the development cycle to obtain their comments and feedback for improvements. The continuous involvement has enabled us to understand the demands and preferences of the customers to offer them exactly what they need.
• Customized solutions: Financial services is a huge domain with numerous activities and functions involved and requirements vary across the various sub-segments. We recognize the need to create customized solutions to fit specific needs. Customized solutions with personalized services and themes have positive impacts on the customer experience levels.
• Automated customer service and support: For products as well as services companies, customer service has become a key driver of customer experience. Meaningful resolutions of customer queries create an improved customer experience. Post-deployment support services are crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction rates. Automation in the support services can help improve performance and accessibility.
• Use of technology - Customer analytics, AI for personalization, chatbots, API-driven integrations, etc. all finds a place in the ongoing evolution of our product strategy. The use of advanced technology is very effective in achieving evolving customer demands at pace and with impact. This drives high customer engagement, creates a richer customer experience, and enables overall satisfaction.

I know that we are not a consumer product company but the experience of building products for financial services companies has convinced me of the importance of embedding a brilliant customer experience into all kinds of products. It’s extremely important. And it’s also extremely doable as our experience shows!