It's a good time forbusinesses to take stock of their achievements and shortcomingsover the past 12 months, and to make plans to increase the formerand reduce the latter in 2015.

For those in banking and financial services, there's one themethat should be a top resolution for 2015: Improving the customerand member experience.

A study conducted earlier this year by J.D. Power illustratedthe need for such improvements, noting that midsize banks inparticular are notably lagging behind larger banks in customersatisfaction, and they were even found to be declining in pointsamong affluent customers.

Can you guess what the number one complaint was among surveyparticipants? It was not high fees or low interest rates thatgarnered the highest percentage of complaints; rather, it was poorcustomer service.

According to a recent survey from Avaya, financial servicescustomers increasingly expect an omni-channel, personalized andproactive customer experience:

• 70% of customers expect financial services companies to linkall threads of communication together, in real-time, acrosschannels.
• 70% expect customer-facing staff to have a single view ofchannels in real-time when they contact the company.
• 92% expect to be proactively notified of any issues and offeredsolutions.
• 69% expect to be contacted the way they want, when they want,with products and services tailored to their preferences and buyinghabits.

Don't Ignore the Simple Self-Service Option YourCustomers Really Want

Despite the majority of business managers acknowledging theimportance of a customer experience management program, less thanhalf have such a system in place.

Thankfully, the research also found an upside: Among financialservices organizations that have a comprehensive customerexperience management program, 98% have seen improvements to theirbusiness as a direct result.

Another positive point to consider is that attaining anomni-channel customer experience doesn't mean scrapping everythingyou're currently using and starting from scratch. In fact, if youhone in on two of the biggest complaints customers consistentlymention in customer surveys — long hold times and having to repeatthemselves to multiple customer service agents — there's onerelatively simple improvement you can implement right away. Thesolution entails combining web chat and SMS and creating a textchat service that allows a customer to text an agent and receive aresponse back on their computer or smartphone.

Why offer this service? According to a study conducted by TheHarris Poll and commissioned by OneReach, among those who use textmessaging, 64% (that number goes up to 76% for 18- to 34-year-olds)said they would prefer to carry out some kind of customerservice activity via SMS.

Another interesting finding in the study was that companies thatoffered text messaging were likely to get a more positive responsefrom customers, including:

• feeling the company understands their time is important,
• staying loyal to the company,
• recommending the company to others, and
• choosing the company over others that do not offer textmessaging.

How would this work? In addition to your normal self-serviceoptions, you simply offer text chat or SMS chat through your mobilewebsite, or even publish an app with texting options. To theagents, it looks like a simple chat session, and they have FAQs andcommon responses available at their fingertips. Add options forcallback as well, and your customers will be much more likely to goto that mobile option, supported with live help if and when theyneed it.

The fact is that anything a company can do today using an IVR(i.e. the bane of many customers' existence) also can be done somuch more efficiently through mobile navigation, with the potentialto generate far better results.

Besides the fact that this solution saves the company the costof a live agent call, it's clear that it's really what yourcustomers want.

Are you ready to meet their demands in 2015?

John Cray is vice president of product management forEnghouseInteractive. He can be reached at 630-544-8958or [email protected].