How Fidelity Creates Amazing Customer Experiences
Fidelity’s customer experience journey started three years ago when they decided to look at their customer’s changing needs and come up with a plan to face that head on. They invested and purchased a technology platform that allowed them to provide a unified view of the customer to the agent, in addition to a technology that allowed them greater flexibility with their video customer service and mobile offerings. Learn more about the Fidelity customer experience journey in my interview with Fidelity Senior Vice President Tom Herrick.
Blake Morgan: Let’s start with the Fidelity customer experience. What is your overall vision and general story?
Tom Herrick: I will start by saying Fidelity is committed to delivering the best customer experience in the financial services industry. It’s what we know will continue to make our business successful in the future. In the last decade the proliferation of channels has increased tremendously. We’ve had to invest to continue to be leaders in delivering a compelling customer experience. I would start by saying one of our key tenants — something we’re working diligently on — is making it easy for customers to do business with us in the channel of their choice. We show up where customers want to access us. 90 percent of our transactions take place on the web — it’s a huge investment for us. It’s not just for data information, it’s turning into a consultative experience in the finance industry where we do higher order objectives and interactions. These include investment selection capabilities and stock research — both a big investment to broaden the experience and capabilities on the web. That’s table stakes. Fidelity has won multiple awards for best in industry capabilities for stock trading, research and planning tools. Obviously you want the experience across contact centers to be seamless — so if someone is transacting on the web it’s very easy for them to tap to call, or chat with a professional. We want cross channel movement available to them. Mobile is an area that has been emerging in the financial services industry. We want to make account information and stock research easily available on mobile. We are investing in the retail environment and our workplace environment. When it comes to working with individual investors — we work with over eight million retail households (family such as a joint account). We have 25 million participants within employer plans. And over eight million retail households.
Morgan: What’s your plan for social customer service strategy?
Herrick: When we look at the social strategy last year we had 12 thousand interactions through social media — whether that’s Twitter or Facebook — that’s less than one percent of total interactions with customers. We had over 775 million interactions total. Right now when you think about social — and delivering outstanding customer service — we have teams of associates on the phone and in the branches — they respond to customers on social. When our agents do interact we can give them the best customer experience but there’s always a security concern. If we get into specific account information — that representative who has engaged with the customer — then we will move that over off of social media into the customer’s channel of choice. We can go to secure chat, phone or otherwise. What’s important to know about social is it’s a relatively small portion of where the customer experience takes place. We see about half of what happens are purely shout outs — such as positive feedback. When it comes to the customer experience it can get started there — we meet the customer where they are — so we can serve the customer and what the customer wants to accomplish. The one thing with financial services that’s important is account security. We’re dealing with highly confidential information. It could be a personal situation — for example “what’s happening in my life? What assets do I have? What income do I have?” We are dealing with social security numbers as well. It’s highly confidential and we will do everything to protect our customer’s information. That can be a limiting factor in the financial services environment.
Morgan: Was there a turning point in customer experience for Fidelity? A moment?
Herrick: You are constantly pushing the limits to be better and better. Three years ago we made a multi-year, very large investment in the platform we use [Genesys]. Our ability to share information and integrate across multiple channels — the customer’s demand for that was exceeding the platform we had to execute. The last two or three years we’re working to install a new platform that integrates mobile, chat, phone rep desktop, video conferencing — we can see where someone is on the web and they get stuck — when they want to jump from the web channel to an associate they can click to call. The information that shows up on the associate’s desktop is relevant to that customer — the customer’s history, where they are on the web at a given time — they come in fully authenticated and verified. The customer will be directed to an associate who has the skills, training and technical expertise to help them where they are. To meet the customer where they are first, provide a great experience and integrate into that experience — the movement of that customer, across multiple channels back and forth. Remove all the barriers of having to start all over again from one channel to another. That’s a huge investment for us. I’ll give you an example, you can have a participant in a 401K plan — we have a seminar on-site at that employer with a training and enrollment, at that point you want the employee to pick up their mobile device and enroll in the plan right at the seminar. You have to integrate with mobile. The reason this is important is that employee might go home that night and sit down with their spouse and say “look what we have through my employer plan– are we saving enough?” So then they go on our website and pick up the information that they put into the mobile app and consider how much they should be saving considering where they want to go. The customer might then say “hey I really want to talk to someone about this — and that goes into investment selections.” Then they’ll pick up the phone and call us and that shows up on the associate’s desktop. The agent will know that customer enrolled that day, and then they’ll have the conversation on planning; that all needs to be connected. They might be ten years away from retirement and they’ll say, “do I have enough to save for medical costs. I want an appointment face to fact.” We have 170 branches through the country and that customer will be able to have a seamless continued experience throughout. The tools on the web, over the phone, account information, authentication verification. We are all about removing stumbling blocks that make it hard to do business with the company. That has been the real hunt — know the customer, make the interaction seamless and allow them to go where they want to go, how they want to interact with us.
We have a five generation challenge — different generations want to engage differently. That’s a challenge we face. I would say it’s a challenge but it’s an opportunity for Fidelity .We want to have lifetime relationships with our customers through a great customer experience that deepens that relationship. Sometimes they want to bring their children in and expand the relationship
Morgan: What was the platform you invested in?
Herrick: It was Genesys — we are very happy with them. We are leaning into video and the Genesys platform has helped us with that. We have 1000 associates using video. It’s not fully rolled out but we see more and more people getting comfortable with video — such as skype. We find it’s much more relevant when you have in-depth financial, guidance and planning interactions — that’s a new, innovative and emerging capability.
Morgan: Do you see video growing exponentially?
Herrick: We are in the pilot phase — last year we saw the uptake stronger. Customers use it for more educational commerce — to discuss goals, strategy and investment advice. We started in a pilot last year with one team of people and now we have over 1000 associates on the platform. People will get more and more comfortable.
Morgan: Do you have any last comments about Fidelity’s customer experience reader’s might not know about?
Herrick: It’s our goal to make it easy for customers to do business with us where they want to do it, how they want to do it, and when they want to do it. Your life is going to cross these multiple channels and as we move across them we cannot ask customers to start over. The information should be continuous. With the advent of all the technology people will always continue to make a difference. When you need to go over to a live person — we need to make them available at all times and plugged into the experience on the digital channel.
Customer experience and innovation go hand in hand. The great thing about technology and innovation is when you focus that toward providing the best customer experience that’s where great things happen.
**This is the first piece in a two-part series about Fidelity customer experience and innovation. Stay tuned for a podcast with their VP of Mobile Evan Gerber in the coming days.
For more customer experience case studies from brands download Blake Morgan’s eBook, 20 Brands Address Their Challenges With the Customer Experience Landscape.
