The Pandemic Signaled A Shift To Hybrid Sales And Service Models

2020 was a year of reckoning as face-to-face interactions disappeared and demand for digital engagement skyrocketed. This compelled wealth management firms to accelerate their digital transformations and upgrade their sales, service, and advisory capabilities. Over the past 12 months, the model approach has permanently pivoted to a hybrid customer experience (CX) model by offering new sales and service interactions where digital and human capabilities complement each other in a synchronous way. To get additional inputs and examples, we interviewed some of the leading private banks like Credit Suisse and Julius Bär, experienced technology partners and digital platforms like CREALOGIX and InvestCloud, and professional services firms like PwC. We also collected several best practices globally.

 

New Sales Models Infuse Digital Capabilities Into Hybrid Client Engagement

As customers quickly adopted new digital buying behaviors, wealth management firms have had to reengineer their sales and onboarding capabilities to include new capability features like:

  • Live video into guided client onboarding.
  • Client onboarding platforms with built-in access to financial advisors.
  • Personalized investment tips generated by digital advice algorithms.

 

New Service Models Offer Better Access To Digital Or Human Service

Our research shows that most clients in Asia Pacific trust human over digital advice and are willing to pay a premium for it. But the COVID-19-induced spike in client activity stretched the banks’ human-led service capacity. So, they had to arm both the clients and their staff with augmented capabilities in a scalable and operationally feasible way by:

  • Streamlining trade instructions and communications using messaging apps.
  • Equipping customers and financial advisors with real-time, aggregated account insights.
  • Generating on-demand, interactive video statements to engage clients better.
  • Downsizing and customizing investment research to make it more consumable.

 

Get Savvier About Hybrid CX, And Begin To Apply It In Your Business

More digital doesn’t mean less human; hybrid CX just means giving your customers the best of both worlds. For the foreseeable future, wealth management will remain human-centric and relationship focused — but as COVID-19 has taught us, financial advisors face unsustainable capacity limitations. So, enabling sales and service capabilities in a hybrid fashion through an omnichannel architecture is the way to go. Read my full report for key recommendations on how to do this.