Banks have woken up to the fact that cross-channel banking is a key ingredient to drive sales and increase loyalty.Cross channel banking goes beyond multi-channel banking. It’s not just providing multiple channels to customers; it requires lockstep coordination of channels so customers can move seamlessly between them with consistent service and experience. Some big obstacles stand in the way though – banks are tackling internal incentive schemes and siloed information.

Last month, I led a cross-channel roundtable in London with Microsoft. The attendees consisted of many tier-one, global financial institutions. Amazingly, some of the biggest players said that cross-channel banking was actually discouraged in their organizations due to their internal incentive schemes. In fact, customers are often encouraged to ‘reapply’ when they want to use other banking services so each individual sales team gets the reward. Not only is this an inefficient use of sales staff’s’ time, but it’s incredibly frustrating for the customer who has to replicate the same information each time they want to open a new account or use a new service.  Certainly not a customer centric approach!

This needs to change. The focus has to come back to the customer. How can this be done?  A cross-channel strategy is essential to break apart the internal silos and inefficient incentive schemes. The right governance and structure that favour collaborative sales approaches is the way forward. Critical is technology that helps make the customer experience seamless across all channels. Truly understanding its customer, while not being too invasive, rapidly builds a loyal base. Streamlining business processes also increases efficiency for the bank. Supporting multiple banking channels and enabling enterprise banking processes to be mobile will reduce customer care costs and, more importantly, drive customer satisfaction.