Michael Hinshaw, President Though an ever-increasing number of technology vendors are offering cutting-edge customer experience (CX) solutions, that has hardly moved the needle when it comes to enabling banks to optimize Customer Experience Management (CXM).
According to Michael Hinshaw, President and founder of customer experience consulting and services firm, McorpCX, “Unsurprisingly, software providers tend to focus primarily on technology. It’s rare for them to understand, much less address, a banking client’s core business and CXM needs beyond technology.”
Given that smart, digitally-enabled customers hold much of the power in today’s relationship between themselves and the institutions that serve them, Hinshaw believes that banking CIOs are in a unique position to improve customer experience by optimizing the data, technology, processes, and systems that deliver the experience. As CX becomes an end-to-end concern, IT plays an increasingly vital role in shaping decisions across the enterprise.
Driven by customers’ ever-increasing use of digital and mobile technologies, as well as branch and call center channels—and the data that surrounds customers as a result of their interactions with an institution—the IT team is often responsible for their design, deployment, and maintenance. In such scenarios, banking technology and digital leaders need to understand how they can articulate and elevate CXM as an internal business discipline which includes, but not limited to, technology.
According to independent analyst Kennedy Research and Advisory, McorpCX is a recognized pioneer in the discipline of customer experience. Since their founding in 2002, they’ve helped financial institutions build, embrace, and evolve the CXM capabilities critical to success in today’s customer-first world.
As a result, McorpCX deeply understands the core business and customer-driven needs of its banking clients.
This perspective helps them chart a roadmap to improved CXM capabilities that allow financial institutions to systematically, predictably, and consistently address the needs of their customers.
With a tech-agnostic approach, the company not only designs and delivers leading CX methodologies, tools, and frameworks, but also helps clients measure and improve CX through the design of metrics systems and the selection and implementation of relevant solutions to drive results.
In the era of smart customers, winning banks do so at the intersection of digital transformation, operational efficiency, and customer-centricity
“We enable CIOs to not only leverage existing systems, but embrace change and transform to meet evolving customer needs while maintaining the alignment between business processes and digital technologies,” noted Graham Clark, Director of Digital Experience at McorpCX.
To that end, McorpCX follows a proven approach to ensure that CXM remains not just a one-time effort, but becomes an ongoing process and core competency. Leveraging their best practices model and the rich insights they’ve gained over the years by having assessed the CXM capabilities of close to 50 banks, they can help identify and prioritize the strategic and functional gaps that can be closed.
These insights also help banks make decisions in the form of customer-facing technology and supporting back-office investments. “Both internal and customer-facing processes have to be simple and aligned to the customers’ needs, and technology should help a company design and deliver the right experiences while also helping them better meet customer expectations,” noted Clark.
McorpCX clients have enjoyed successes ranging from decreased cost of funds to greater product penetration and higher loyalty, by aligning offerings and supporting capabilities to the actual needs of core customer segments. The CMO of a $7 Billion USD regional bank said that as a result of working with McorpCX, his institution saw “revenue, deposits, retention, and customer acquisition all grow…”
Although customers globally demand a digital-first experience in a multi-channel environment, enhancing CX takes more than just technology. This is why McorpCX remains focused on supporting financial institutions’ CX evolution in a world where customers and their expectations are rapidly and continually changing.
The CXMA was born out of the experience of Michael Hinshaw, Founder and President of McorpCX, and Diane Magers, CCXP, CEO of Experience Catalysts and Emeritus Chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). They co-founded it to provide every employee in an organization with the knowledge, tools, and skills needed to work in more experience-centric ways. The CXMA offers a range of expert-led, practitioner-designed courses from self-paced eLearning to instructor-led and hybrid, cohort-based classes.
According to Michael, “Experience-led change is hard to do from the top-down; it requires helping the organization broadly understand what customer and employee experience is, why they should care, and how everyone has a role, no matter where they sit or what they do. This means giving people the tools they need to drive changes in how they think and behave.”
Designed and built to educate, build skills and competencies, and engage every individual within an organization in experience-led thinking and behaviors, CXMA lessons are based on feedback and insights from over 100 CX leaders and practitioners, including an advisory board of 20 CX leaders from across industries and company types (B2B, B2C, and B2B2C).
"We believe the best way to teach customer-centric knowledge and skills is based on practical, hands-on experience driving experience-centric behaviors and attitudes in an organization,” said Diane Magers. “That’s why we intentionally chose faculty members who have been in the trenches as leaders and practitioners inside enterprises. Our collective expertise at driving experience-led change in organizations of all sizes is at the heart of the CXMA.”
The CXMA is also designed as a way to align all levels in an organization—executives, employees, and CX teams and practitioners—on a common understanding of, and the knowledge to, embed customer-centricity. CXMA’s on-demand eLearning courses also provide CX Practitioners re-certification credits for the CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) credential granted by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). McorpCX is a sponsor of the CXPA.
Thomas Hearn, former Enterprise Business Process Manager and Head of Customer Experience for a large Texas-based communications provider, noted that "CXMA offers a comprehensive solution to help any organization, regardless of size, be fully prepared for the journey into experience management. This program embodies the 'Gold Standard' in preparing an organization for customer-centricity, with a focus on the cultural and behavioral shifts required to drive change at all levels, throughout a company's business ecosystem."
The CXMA simplifies the way organizations approach experience-led culture change, providing an invaluable resource for developing customer-centric people and leaders. For more information or to view a course, visit http://www.cxmastersacademy.com.
About the Customer Experience Masters Academy (CXMA)
The CXMA is committed to educating, training, and engaging employees at all levels and roles in organizations to adopt customer-centric ways of thinking and behaving. With a range of practitioner-designed and expert-led courses, the CXMA empowers organizations to improve customer experience by fostering a shared understanding of and commitment to customer-centricity. The program's design is based on a proven capabilities and competency framework as well as feedback and insights from over 100 CX leaders and practitioners, ensuring a tailored, effective, and outcomes-based learning experience for all participants.