Co-creation Brings in New Rules For Consumer Engagement
There was almost unanimous agreement at the FS Forum in St Paul De Vence over the challenges facing the Financial Services Industry. They were described in four words: trust, reputation, transparency and engagement. There was also serious acknowledgement that the consumer has a vital role in helping the major brands from the industry to meet these challenges. There was a sense too amongst some of the delegates that in the words of Simon Clift the recent CMO of Unilever they felt “behind the consumer” and that this is a very uncomfortable place for a brand or organisation to be.
Changing Consumer Landscape
This is to be expected as the consumer landscape is changing fast. It is common knowledge that the advent of Web 2.0 has given consumers the confidence and the ability to take more control of the relationship they have with brands. It has given rise to the term “empowered consumers”, a new breed of customer who have a strong belief not just in their own voice but also in their own creativity, ideas and self-expression. It is no longer about what your brand does to the consumer but what consumers are doing to and with your brand.
Impact on Financial Services Industry
This trend manifests itself in the Financial Services Sector in a number of ways. The first is that the empowered consumer of today sees openness as key to building trust and accountability with the brands they engage with. This is critical for banking brands where events from the last two years have seen trust and fairness eroded. This has been picked up by the FSA’s ‘fairness’ objectives where banks are now being tasked to provide fair products and deal with customers in a fair way. Secondly there is a drive to streamline consumer interactions and make customers lives easier by combining products. The social web will have a big impact on financial services marketing, sales and business communication processes with demand from consumers for new service designs and interfaces. This will enable consumers to draw upon a wider base of advice from places such as twitter, opinion aggregators and financial forums and will lead to real time customer service becoming a top differentiator. And finally customers are moving away from conventional advice channels (IFAs, banks) and moving more towards peer advice because social media has made this possible in ways that were not there before.
