What’s coming…

I attended the Finovate 08 conference in New York yesterday. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the event, it is a deep immersion into emerging companies in the financial services space. Twenty-four companies present and demo their offerings in one day, with each getting just seven minutes to make the sale. There are opportunities for deeper conversation and questions in a separate forum, but the real focus is on the demo.

So after 24 presentations, what’s my take on innovation in financial services and its impact on the customer? It’s going to be good -- very, very good. Let’s play out a scenario:

I’m a 20 or 30 something, and I’m starting to make some good money and get serious about my financial situation. I sign on to Mint, Quicken Online, Thrive or Wesabe, where I can see all of my accounts, bills and investments in one place so I know where I am. And, if I want to do it all on FaceBook, I can get the MyMoney app and run my banking right out of my home page. I go to CreditKarma to check out my credit rating and based on my rating, it looks like I can get a better deal on my credit card and some other stuff as well. Then I check out my credit card choices at FiLife, BillShrink, or RateSurfer and discover a couple of cards that match my lifestyle and can save me money. If I'm looking for a great rate on a mortgage, I can go to SmartHippo.

It’s time that I start thinking about investments but I’m really clueless and intimidated, so I go to WeSeed to learn how to invest and share ideas with others who are learning as well without risking my money. Once I get more sophisticated, I can go to Boulevard R for some financial planning guidance and then when I’m in the market, I can analyze my positions at Inner8. To add to my portfolio I can visit MoneyAisle and have banks compete for my CD in an automated reverse auction, or I can invest in person to person loans at Lending Club or Loanio.

After a couple of years, I decide to start my own business so I use Small Business Finance Works through my bank’s online banking service (Note: This won't be live until December).

There’s a remarkable explosion in the integrated delivery of information and services going on and what we saw provided some great examples. The value of the customer experience is being enhanced and customers are going to benefit.

The question is how do existing, physical world organizations capitalize on this explosion and move to the next level of customer service? Embrace new applications and new technologies, allow customers to use and accept them on their own terms, and find ways to build them into the overall service delivery strategy. The opportunity is there to create a financial services enterprise that completely changes the playing field. It will take strategic vision, and a lot of hard work at the street level, but it will be worthwhile.

The truth is that the alternative will probably be to watch an entire generation move to a different way of managing their money. Not necessarily a good thing.

Why do we do this?

I had the opportunity to take a cab ride this week from my hotel to the airport. It was 4:30 a.m., I was tired, and in no mood to talk. But my driver would have none of that. He talked about cabs being robbed, his kids, his grand kids, the last family reunion they had in Atlanta, and how he loved to “ride” in his cab because he was too poor to have a car when he was “coming up.” Cab driving was his second career; his first was working for 34 years at the Swift meat packing plant. He’d been driving for 20 years.

He made what could have been a dreary, mundane experience terrific, just by talking to me about him. He was eighty years old.

It occurred to me that it’s easy to forget why we mess with customer experience and customer service. It’s not about improving efficiency, increasing profitability, decreasing attrition, or keeping a high first call resolution percentage. Those are metrics, ways of keeping score. It’s about helping people live successful and prosperous lives in a world where that’s difficult to do. My cab driver has spent 80 years on this planet working hard, raising his six kids, putting four of them through college, dealing with high gas prices, factory closings, health issues, and job loss. I doubt that there’s a lot of space in his world to think of or care about banking or payments.

Maybe instead of worrying about the metrics that help us keep score or on trying to “surprise and delight” when we can’t really deliver some of the most basic services, we should just work hard to get out of people’s way so that they can do what they need to do. Maybe not being noticed is the highest level of service that we can provide.

Setting realistic goals in terms of customer experience and understanding the customer in their context may be the best way to deliver the level of service that is really valuable to the customer, so people can get on with the stuff in their lives that really matters.