Today, brands are under pressure to deliver measurable business impact through their customer engagement activities. This is made more challenging with the world entering a moment of profound change – resurging from the pandemic and coping with economic uncertainties – and with consumer behaviors and preferences evolving rapidly.
As consumers form the new “C-suite” of this era, how have their expectations evolved and what strategies can financial services brands deploy to deepen their engagement with their most valued customers and drive better commercial returns?
To help answer this question, James Ellis, Collinson’s Vice President, Business Development, Asia Pacific joined a panel of esteemed speakers from EY, Security Bank, China Banking Corporation and RCBC Credit Cards at the 2023 Asian Banking & Finance Forum in Manila on 3 October 2023. The discussion covered how customer expectations have evolved and how brands in the financial services industry are adapting to meet these changing needs; including how travel-related rewards and benefits play a strong role in engaging customers and influencing brand loyalty.
Key takeaways from the session:
- We are in a “Customer Experience Era”; consumers form the new “C-suite” of this era. They are expecting more sophisticated, tailored experiences that will add value to their lives. To thrive in this ever-changing and competitive landscape, brands need to show that they “know” their customers, “value” them and “engage” them in their preferred way.
- Collinson’s 2023 Asia Pacific consumer insights report – The New Rules of Engagement: Customer Expectations Revealed shared that 76% of consumers in APAC believe the experience a brand provides is as important as its products and/or services.
- With travel returning at speed, further insights from Collinson’s report show the significant value that consumers in Asia Pacific place on travel-related benefits and rewards and demonstrate the power that these benefits and rewards have in driving acquisition, retention and usage.
- There is a strong and positive correlation between travel and customer engagement and loyalty. Frequent travellers index much higher than non-frequent travellers on loyalty attributes. For example, people that took 10+ trips in the last year were members of twice as many programmes as those that took 1 or fewer trips per year. Similarly, 60% of frequent travellers said their spending behaviour was influenced by their loyalty programme as compared to only 20% for non-frequent travellers.
- Financial services brands are well placed to get closer to their customers and build stronger connection and engagement with them. To do so, they will need to build on their existing foundation of trust with their customers and find ways to extend the reach of their relationships beyond traditional boundaries through providing aspirational enhancements (for instance, through travel-related rewards and benefits) that will interest their consumers.
Contact Collinson today to learn how to build closer connections with your most valuable customers.
