A Interview At Efma s Retail Payments Week - 2677 Words

This paper is based on a talk presented at EFMA’s Retail Payments Week in 2014 by Artefact’s co-founder and Principal, Rob Girling. By focusing on the customer experience, banks could shift their role in the consumer’s life from payment processors to trusted advisors. [Anecdote about comparison shopping or a pain point] It’s official: We are living in the age of the customer. With real-time access to all sorts of information like prices, loan rates, product features and competitors, technology has empowered consumers to be more informed than ever before. As a result, consumers are causing disruption across every industry, even in banking and finance. The key to keeping these consumers is positive customer experiences that build solid†¦show more content†¦This isn’t just happening in the digital world, we’re seeing it take place across nearly every industry, from healthcare to finance. Over the last decade, we’ve witnessed massive international companies vanish and be replaced by new services with much better customer experiences. These services provide entirely new benefits, such as instant access, incredible product variety and lower price points, completely disrupting the industry in favor of the customer. Take Blockbuster for example. At its peak in 2004, the movie giant was operating more than 9,000 stores. Enter Netflix, an entirely new player in the game that offered mail order DVDs and on-demand video and streaming services online. Suddenly, making the trip to the local Blockbuster was just too much of an inconvenience. In 2013, unable to innovate and provide customers with a better experience, Blockbuster rented out its last movie, aptly titled, This Is the End. This example demonstrates how even massive companies can fall if they fail to innovate for the consumer. Not only that, but new startups and entrants to the market are blurring the boundaries between industries as they create new kinds of services. Traditionally car companies and transit systems did not think of services like Car2Go, Uber and Zipcar as competition. Similarly, hotels did not realize they would eventually compete with AirBnB, and banks did not think of Funding Circle, Lending Club or Kickstarter as competition until very