Customer-centric use of technology

TECH EXPERTS (From left) Rey Lugtu, CEO of Hungry Workhorse; Mitch Bautista, enterprise growth  director at Amazon Web Services; Albert Tinio, CEO of GoTyme Bank and Jack Nguyen, Insider Asia-Pacific regional managing director – Contributed photo

Consumers will continue to be top of mind of businesses and establishments wanting to grow and prosper. And technology, no matter how advanced, will simply be a tool for keeping clients loyal and satisfied.

At the forum Uplift Philippines—The New Way of CX: Winning Customer Loyalty (CX means customer experience)—speakers and panelists stress that technology is not adopted simply to keep up with the times but is being harnessed to broaden and deepen customer experience.

Instead of depersonalizing interactions with customers, the forum points out that data and information gathered by latest technologies are being used to customize, improve and elevate service. Technology and innovation are actually helping businesses collect data to develop new products that clients need and/or want, and to strengthen and upgrade services to respond to and anticipate customer requirements.

The forum, which brought together leaders in banking and finance, was organized by Insider, the leading marketing platform for delivering individualized, cross-channel customer experiences. A newly minted unicorn company (a unicorn is a privately held startup with a value of over $1 billion), Insider enables enterprise marketers to connect customer data across channels and systems, predict clients’ future behavior with an artificial intelligence intent engine and build individualized customer experiences.

Albert Tinio, co-CEO of fully digital GoTyme Bank, says “they could use data to customize [products and services] for customers” and develop new ways to do business.

Tinio, a participant in the panel on “Digitalizing the Organization: Data Management, Teams and Customer Experience,” stresses the importance of how data are presented. “Humanize the use of data,” he suggests.

Co-panelist Mitch Bautista of Amazon Web Service, who notes that the Philippine market is quite different, says data could be used to determine what would be impactful to customers. “Customers know what they want to do,” Bautista says, adding that all companies are rich in data and only need to know the best way to use the information.

Hungry Workhorse president and CEO Rey Lugtu advises fellow entrepreneurs to “be not afraid to come up with products that consumers like.” Despite the name, Hungry Workhorse is not a food business but a digital technology and innovation consulting firm.

In the second panel discussion, “Transforming Banking for the Digital Age: Embracing Innovation and Customer-Centricity,” Krisia Cruz, chief product officer of Komo, says their focus is on the best technology that could provide data and information to develop new products. Komo is the digital banking service of East West Bank.

Cris Concepcion, vice president and head of Metrobank’s institutional brand marketing, says they are using technology to fast-track the development of ways to sustain the loyalty of existing customers and attract new ones. They also use innovation to deliver services reflective of the bank’s values.

The panel was moderated by Varun Budhiraja, senior account executive of AppsFlyer, a platform providing measurement, analytics engagement and fraud technologies

Jack Nguyen, Insider’s vice president for growth in Southeast Asia, says it is the startup’s mission to help companies grow sustainably by adopting customer-centric technology. He stresses that, with the new technologies, there is no longer a shortage of data but the problem is more about how to use the information and integrate it into business operations. Nguyen moderated the first panel discussion.

He says big failures are often not due to technology but mindset. All stakeholders in the business have to accept the changes. Concepcion points out that, in the past, customers had small data to deal with—their account balance—but now they have so much to consider.

The Metrobank executive stresses the need to invest time and effort in improving customer experience with the new technologies, including promoting financial literacy, as he points out that relationships with customers are for the long term.

—Contributed