Today, information can be gathered from numerous sources to ensure you’re on equal footing, but the advice and confirmation of experts remain important. Even with online mortgages, video conferencing facilities, and the steady expansion of self-service channels, in-person conversations remain key for building trust with a bank’s customers.
At Zühlke, we believe that effective digital advisory consists of three assisted forms of advice that complement the self-service channels:
Present up-to-date customer information clearly and in full, serving as an entry point for all customer-related processes and offering advisors a convenient overview.
Allows the customer conversation to go forward in accordance with the bank's financial advisory philosophy to deliver the highest possible quality.
We understand hybrid advice as the combination of face-to-face advice and self-advice: customers can seamlessly switch between the two depending on the situation and always receive comprehensive and professional advice.
Investing in a financial advisory solution prompts the build-or-buy question. However, there are only a few specialised advisory tools on the market and often several solutions have to be combined in order to cover the entire journey (e.g. investing and financing). As a result, some banks decide against buying ready-made software products and instead prioritise their individual advisory approach to achieve differentiation with their custom advisory tool.
With our tried-and-tested project approach, reusable blueprints, and specialised expertise, we can quickly create the right advisory solution for your company. We focus on customer- and advisor-centricity during the conception and design of the solution and thus prioritise concrete benefits. Thanks to open-source technologies and modern component-based clean architecture, our solutions are stable and cost-effective in operation.
Third-generation advisory solutions will be significantly different. Technological developments in recent years are at the heart of this change. These are the main drivers:
Screen-based user interfaces will disappear as ambient technologies, haptic feedback, technologically enhanced components, voice commands, and other screen-free input and output methods take over tablets' current role. This shift places greater emphasis on natural conversation, restoring trust, and lasting interpersonal connections while diminishing the dominance of technology.
Artificial intelligence will enter the picture, providing automated suggestions and support to augment the capabilities of advisors during meetings with customers. A novel form of information transparency, marked by remarkable speed, will become the new normal. Instantly available regulation-compliant summaries with real-time content validation will greatly simplify post-processing tasks.
Hybrid will become the norm as an increasing number of customers want to explore and experiment independently. They will handle some tasks through self-advice and switch to an assisted channel for others. They will expect a seamless experience that ties into their initial or follow-up actions. They’ll be able to get help from either an advisor or a virtual assistant equipped with advisory enhancements.
Offering modern methods of advice will become crucial in attracting the best talent as advisors report that customer conversations without an intelligent tool feel like something "from the Stone Age". First- and second-generation tools have raised expectations for the future. If you are looking for the best advisors, the best tools are an argument in your favour.
evux AG complements our range of technological and implementation-focused offerings by adding specialised consulting services tailored to digital financial advisory. Independent since 2016, evux advises companies on the design and implementation of advisory processes and advisory tools. They rely on a deep understanding of the needs of those affected and involved in client advisory and draw on the knowledge gained from 10 years of academic research in the field of advisory tools, more than 15 years of experience on relevant projects, and over 1000 hours of observation of advisory meetings. evux puts this knowledge to work for you in evidence-based, directly applicable, actionable interaction concepts, interview guides, training concepts, and roll-out scripts. We place these into the context of your bank and your employees with coordinated user research. This is how the transformation succeeds.
Marc Faeh is Senior Business Solution Manager and joined Zuhlke in March 2020. He supports customers in increasing customer loyalty and efficiency through ideas and solutions in the portal and collaboration environment. After an apprenticeship in banking and studies in Business Information Systems, Marc worked six years as a management consultant for a leading global IT services company. His focus was on transformation and business architecture projects in various industries (Telco, Banking, Travel, Card Issuing and Pharma). He then worked for 11 years on customer side as a project manager in the retail industry leading complex business and systems projects in the POS, commerce and payment area.