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To compete in 2025 and beyond, financial service companies such as credit unions, banks, and lenders must turn their attention to, and invest in, the customer experience. Financial institutions that consistently deliver awesome customer experiences have the best chance at outperforming their competitors, building brand loyalty, and eventually growing the business. But what areas of CX are worth investing in? The following trends aren’t just fads or phases, but customer experience considerations that are not only proven to level up your CX, but are here to stay.Â
Artificial intelligence continued to have a strong influence on businesses across all industries in 2024, a trend we expect to continue into 2025. Its a resource that can help businesses offer quicker response times, better self-service options, and more personalized communications. We believe the power of AI is in it's ability not to replace your customer-facing teams, but to supplement the customer experience to improve it.
That's why we introduced our NiceAI tools in 2024 to help AskNicely users draw deeper insights from their feedback, implement dynamic surveys, and moderate feedback to make it nicer for your customer-facing teams.
In addition to implementing AI solutions, automation can help save time and make employees happier in their roles. Customer-facing teams in the finance industry are often bogged down with time-consuming or menial administrative tasks that could easily be automated. For every minute spent on this kind of work, a minute is taken away from a frontline team member connecting with their customers in an empathetic, personalized and meaningful way. Adding automations and training teams on these tools can be a time saving measure and help improve employee satisfaction across the company.
Investment scams were responsible for $4.6 billion in fraud loss in 2023, according to the Federal Trade Commission. It should come as no surprise then that consumers are concerned with their security and privacy when it comes to their finances. This makes it one of the top trends for financial services to consider in 2025. In fact, 90% of respondents to a survey about their banking priorities said that the security of personal info is important or extremely important, according to a report from Glassbox.
Financial services that offer their customers enhanced privacy and security will have a leg up on those competitors who don't in 2025. Additionally, those that offer quick response times, and effective customer support will come out on top in terms of the customer experience and satisfaction. If something does go wrong, customers will be happier if they can get it resolved quickly and easily from a competent team member.
Personalization has been a hot topic among CX trends for a while now with big banks taking their cues from technology companies. Simon Nilsson, former Chief Commercial Officer of Northmill Bank pointed out, financial service companies can turn to brands outside of their sector to get inspiration for new and innovative ways to create personalized experiences. “We take more of our cues from companies like Netflix and Spotify than we do from the big Swedish banks,” he said.Â
Personalization in financial services is all about delivering a valuable service or product to a customer based on personal experiences and historical customer data. It's about meeting customers where they are, and delivering on the things that matter to them the most. For example, the Bank of Ireland is implementing data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning to recommend the right products and offerings to their customers depending on what’s happening in their lives. The equivalent of the “recommended for you” section of Netflix is beginning to shape the future of financial services as well.Â
Personalization can also be as simple as addressing customers by name, keeping clear records of past interactions to address customer needs, and empowering frontline employees to deliver beyond policy and procedure.Â
Fats feedback loops are a key component of top-tier customer experiences, and the financial services industry is no exception to that. A fast customer feedback loop is created when feedback is collected immediately after a service is completed (or at another key moment in a customer’s journey) and delivered in real-time to customer-facing teams.
The loop allows your customer experience management team to stay on top of ever-changing customer needs and coach their frontline teams based on what matters most to the customer. When feedback loops are slow or broken, like when feedback never makes it to those customer-facing teams, it’s difficult to take meaningful action on the feedback. This creates a gap between customer wants and needs and your frontline teams who are left relying on guesswork or general CX training to serve their customers.
Chris Wong, New Zealand Home Loan (NZHL) former Head of Customer & Product highlighted the importance of using immediate feedback in real-time. “With other competitors, banks and whatnot, you don’t necessarily get that; where every single customer will receive [the survey] at that very big moment of truth”, it was a change Chris noted was “massive for [NZHL]”. Not only was the impact massive for the bottom line, boardroom and customers, but also for the employees responsible for delivering the experiences. With a whole new real-time oversight on their work, teams are celebrated for getting things right, and have clear insights on the areas they can improve on every day.Â
Financial service companies are also catching on to the importance of the employee experience, and its role in driving exceptional customer experiences. Think about it: if a loan consultant is overworked, underpaid and underappreciated, the aren't able to deliver the best experiences to their customers. In comparison, when companies invest in their frontline employee experience, by providing them with the technology, tools, and recognition they deserve, that rolls over into the experiences they deliver. Employee experience is determined by a combination of factors including the culture and environment of the business they work for, fairness and inclusion, well-being, support and feedback, colleagues, and more. Investments into the frontline return on customer experience. In fact, a study by Deloitte found that by delivering a best-in-class EX, banks can increase by four times their profit per employee than those that don't.Â
While the customer needs and expectations in the financial services industry are always changing, the following five trends are here to stay:Â
