Heard at ONWARD: The New Customer Experience in Financial Services

At ONWARD 17, Yext's own Steve Goldberg (Group Vice President, Enterprise Sales) sat down with Joanna Belbey (Compliance Subject Matter Expert, Proofpoint), Jim Olson (Principal, Marketing Communications, Edward Jones), and Jeremy K. Balkin (Head of Innovation, HSBC Bank USA) to discuss how top financial services brands across retail banking, mortgage, and insurance are bringing together their digital and brick-and-mortar strategies to focus on the customer experience — from search to service.

During the discussion, the panelists touched upon several topics, including consumer reliance on mobile and the importance of integrating mobile experiences in all marketing efforts. Balkin noted, "our competition is not another bank — our competition is our customers' last customer experience." In other words, the financial services sector faces competition not only from other banks and mortgage lenders, but from their customers' easy-to-navigate online experiences with other consumer-facing brands like Amazon and Uber.

The group also discussed the impact of "Millennialization." According to Balkin, "Everyone is a Millennial. What Millennials want is what everyone gets — Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials themselves." Today's age of intelligent services and on-demand technology have fueled Millennials' use of (and power over) how brands reach searching consumers. This means financial services organizations must adapt in order to reach this important generation.

Finally, Belbey emphasized the importance of not being afraid to try new marketing tactics. "You need to always test," she said. "Test the old existing process against the new one."

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