Customer experience – DX Coffee Chats

As consumer behaviour evolves, it’s raising the stakes for legacy firms across all industry sectors. In this fast-evolving environment, effectively engaging with existing and prospective customers is now table stakes. But how do traditional businesses accomplish this?

In this DX Coffee Chat—the second in our series—host Peter Hughes, Partner and National Customer Practice Lead at KPMG in Canada, sat down with Rizwan Khalfan, EVP and Chief Digital & Payments Officer at TD Bank Group, for a conversation about next-generation digital CX.

Read on to explore some of the insights they shared and get the full scoop by watching the on-demand session recording.

The pace of innovation continues to accelerate while the competitive landscape continues to shift and evolve. A great customer experience (CX) is no longer just about meeting or exceeding customer needs; it’s about building trust and putting a customer’s personal preferences at the centre of the experience.

Over the years, TD built its brand identity on making the banking experience more comfortable, via its iconic ‘big green chair.’ And integrating TD's green chair into the digital realm – representing what it stands for and maintaining its strong linkage to human connection – has been a dynamic journey that has involved finding the right talent, investing in innovation and creating an agile delivery mechanism.

In financial services, for example, legacy banks are still competing with their traditional competitors, but they’re also competing with Big Tech, which is constantly raising the bar. “Customer experience is key,” says Khalfan. “We live in an era where consumers are empowered through innovation. And their expectations are constantly rising.”

That means organizations like TD—where customer service is a cornerstone of success—must amplify their focus on digital CX. Here are some key takeaways from our DX Coffee Chat about exciting opportunities and practical strategies to create next-generation digital CX.

• Invest in agility: “It’s not natural for banks to be agile. But we have invested in agility and an operating model that allows us to keep pace with our customers’ expectations,” says Khalfan. For example, TD established its own Innovation Centre of Excellence, where digital design experts focus on creating impactful and meaningful customer-centric experiences. It also allows them to experiment with emerging technologies—such as the metaverse, IoT, VR and AR—to differentiate their brand and exceed customer expectations.
• Accelerate with AI: When the relationship-based banking experience that existed in the physical world initially moved into the digital realm, the focus was on simple, fast transactions. That evolved into ‘segmenting’ customers with more targeted offers. But in the era of artificial intelligence, it’s moving from segmentation to one-on-one interactions. “AI allows you to know your customers and anticipate their needs, so every interaction is relevant and highly personalized,” says Khalfan.
• Use predictive AI for personalization: TD also made a strategic acquisition in Layer 6, a Canadian predictive AI company and pioneer in personalized, insight-driven experiences for the financial services industry. That’s because, according to Khalfan, the key to digital CX is personalization. “We now have access to large amounts of data, so we know the customer intimately,” says Khalfan. “But if we use traditional data analytics, it takes too long. So the accelerator here is AI.”
• Connect experiences across channels: But all of these experiences need to be connected and deliver a human connection—no matter which channel the customer chooses, whether a mobile app or a call centre. That means driving a customer-centric team culture that breaks down internal siloes and innovates to create more integrated experiences for clients. It also means enabling your organizations’ competencies with the right capabilities, technologies and ecosystems to deliver on your brand promise across all channels.
• Build trust through transparency: Underlying these connected, personalized experiences is trust. Because once trust is broken, it’s hard to get it back. Firms need to be transparent about how they’re using customer data, making it easy to understand what’s being shared, how it’s being shared and—perhaps most importantly—how it will benefit the customer. “Our fundamental relationship with customers is based on trust. We want to put the customer in the driver’s seat for every single interaction,” says Khalfan. “Customers are willing to share more and more data with us, as long as the benefit is apparent.”

Ultimately, better customer engagement drives retention, loyalty and the ability to serve customers on a broader basis. Today, TD has more than 11.5 million active digital customers. “We can now play a much bigger role,” says Khalfan. “Not only can we help customers with financial wellness, but what are their dreams, their aspirations? So it’s becoming a higher calling.”