Customer understanding is the new digital

One hundred and fifty years ago, credit union pioneer F. W. Raiffeisen implemented a concept that still holds its own in today’s digital economy: perfect your customer understanding! Its long history of customer relationships has enabled banks to assemble a vast and valuable treasure of customer intelligence and insights, which serves as a solid foundation for customer-centricity and customer experience optimisation. Banks that have an intimate customer understanding have an important strategic advantage over FinTech and neo-banks. On the path to transforming customer understanding into concrete value-adding solutions, however, several obstacles must be overcome. It is imperative to understand who each of your customers really is and to provide them with the appropriate customised experiences and solutions. Value-adding digitalisation supports this goal, if digitalisation is not limited to process automation or implementation of high-tech gadgets. Digitalisation and technology are only tools that are merely as good as the bank’s understanding of when and how to use them. As risk adverse organisations, banks must be aware of the perils of the Perception Gap. This can help them to stay focused on customer understanding. While there are many ways of embedding customer understanding in a bank, case studies like the reorganisation around industries and Industry Leads or the Digital Basket, as a smart way to include your customers in your learning journey, can serve as guiding examples.