Webinar Recap: The Next Phase in Omnichannel: Innovative Digital Solutions That Drive Outcomes

Relay hosted an insightful and thought-provoking conversation between Jonas Ng, COO at Laurel Road, a subsidiary of KeyBank, and Holly Hughes, CMO at Bank Administration Institute (BAI) around the next phase in omnichannel and solutions to support the future of customer engagement.

During this 30-minute chat, Jonas and Holly share ideas for what the future holds for engagement leaders, engagement technologies and strategies that have worked at KeyBank, and more. Read on as we dive into a brief summary of the discussion, and if you want to hear the full chat, please click here.

Jonas and Holly started the discussion with the rising prevalence of hybrid solutions for customer engagement. Describing it as “phygital,” Jonas talked about the overlap in physical and digital options for customers today and how a hybrid of those can help to satisfy the needs based on their customer preferences. The evolution of customer engagement at banks has grown from multi-channel to present-day omnichannel, but the next phase Jonas predicts is multimodal or hybrid channel.

Jonas’s idea for the future of engagement expands on this hybrid notion.”By multimodal, or hybrid, what I’m really referring to there is that instead of things truly being multichannel or omnichannel, it’s the combination of multiple channels at the exact same time, literally in the same experience” he explains. By maximizing the best components of various channels all in one experience, he has seen great engagement success with his customers at KeyBank and Laurel Road.

Jonas specifically recalls his experience using the Relay Feed as an example of the hybrid solution he describes. “So what Relay does is an example of a combo hybrid channel,” Jonas explains. “You send a text, and you pull the customer into a mobile web experience. The UX that we have found works the best is like a vertical scroll, so say that we sent out five, 10 emails in the month, we just put them all in that vertical scroll. Once a month, we send a text message, the customer can scan through in that vertical scroll and get through all of those emails in a fraction of time.” Capitalizing on human behavioral science, he believes customers are more willing to read the content from each individual email if it is served up continuously and all at once in a familiar and accessible format.

But where does this leave omnichannel? On the topic of omnichannel, Jonas and Holly discussed that it can be very effective strategy, but the challenge with omnichannel is in connecting data across the various channels at the organization. Jonas shared anecdotally, “we tried to figure out how to leverage data, but we’ve had to solve for omnichannel, because all of those different channels. The data that was involved with each specific channel wasn’t actually available across those channels. So, in an omnichannel world, this is difficult because you’re really connecting data and interaction experiences across those different channels.”

Clearly, when customer data is in disparate systems and therefore can’t be turned into something meaningful, it can drive a less-than-deal, friction-filled experience for the customer. “I think data is arguably the most powerful asset that any of us have,” explained Jonas, “but a friction filled experience is highly correlated to disloyalty.”

Relay Feed technology specifically helps banks circumvent the data issue by providing a personal 1:1 connection for all lines of business to connect with the customer in a way that’s meaningful to both the customer and the business.

Because of the engagement success the bank has seen with the Relay channel, Jonas noted they have begun using it for other internal initiatives. He said “The Relay platform is highly configurable, so it puts it in the hands of the business. You can create your own content, your own HTML, your own imagery, and we realized since it was so easy to get the customer to engage, to open up the SMS and go to the web experience, we actually started leveraging it as a test and learn platform. Any interesting UX concept that you wanted to give a shot, you can get a hundred, 500,000 customers to interact very quickly, because they respond to the text message.”

Along with hybrid solutions, Jonas spoke to his experience working at a Fintech subsidiary and how collaboration with the KeyBank team is key to the success of both types of organizations in such a competitive space. Additionally, as a leader in the financial services space, Jonas shared his advice on how to work as a team to create the success that he has seen and how in order to be successful in the future, leaders should move quickly and embrace the madness. It’s a chat you don’t want to miss.

To hear the entirety of the conversation, click here. To learn more about the Relay Feed and its power as a hybrid channel for engagement, click here.