The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was recently found by a court to be unconstitutional. But regardless of the politics and legalities of the CFPB, the cause of protecting banking consumers should be a concern for everyone. This includes retail banks. A cynical observer might ask why a bank should care about consumers, but principles like trust, transparency, and personalization are essential for financial services institutions to succeed in the long run.
The truth is, if banks were better at regulating themselves, government regulation would not be such a hot topic. From the CFPB site: “Complaints can give us insights into problems people are experiencing in the marketplace and help us regulate consumer financial products and services under existing federal consumer financial laws, enforce those laws judiciously, and educate and empower consumers to make informed financial decisions.” In a perfect world, banks would already be doing this.
Customers in financial services, unfortunately, are used to bad customer service. This report by McKinsey from 2019 is as relevant as ever; speaking on the state of customer service, they write: “Retail banks have also not kept pace with the improvements in customer experience seen in other consumer industries.” This gap leaves a giant opportunity for retail banks to rise above the competition.
Retail banks, welcome to Salesforce Genie
While we will never live in a perfect world, technology makes building a customer experience built on trust, transparency, and personalization easier than ever before, even at large scales. This is especially true with the advent of Salesforce Genie. Salesforce Genie (announced at Dreamforce 2022), is described as the real-time platform for customer magic. IT veterans may scoff at the term “magic,” but as Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The key technical realities behind Genie are:
Real-time data with Genie
What’s important here is the massive volume of data Genie can now handle. We are talking about billions of rows of data.
Intelligence with Einstein
The magic of Einstein has been around for a while, but with Genie, AI insights happen in true real time.
Automation with Salesforce Flow
This is where the possibilities get very exciting. With the massive amount of data Genie can process and AI running on top of it, Flows can kick off processes.
What can Salesforce Genie do for retail banking?
The implications of Genie for retail banking are huge, particularly when it comes to customer service. First of all, having AI monitor massive amounts of transactions can help identify complaints before customers even realize they have them. And Genie is also adaptable to a bring-your-own model (BYOM) when it comes to AI. So if a bank’s IT team is already using AWS Sagemaker or Snowflake, they don’t have to change what already works. And actions taken to address concerns can kick off manually, not by having an analyst refresh a dashboard between coffee breaks.
Financial Services Cloud already connects every customer experience from any channel and gives the bank a single, shared view of customer data and insights. Genie adds the ability to bring more data into that view, all in real time. This way, retail banks can resolve customer issues faster and more completely.
Salesforce’s Customer Data Platform, and its integration with Marketing Cloud have now evolved into Genie. With that, Genie gives retail banks the ability to create personalized products and real-time offers. For consumers, this can lead to money saved and greater loyalty to their bank.
The time for retail banks to take the lead on customer service is now. Genie makes things possible that would have taken a massive amount of time, labor, and software. You might call that magic.
Learn about our Salesforce Genie consulting services and how we can help you make magic happen with your data.
