A differentiated customer experience is the result of an enterprise-wide effort, involving even seemingly unrelated tasks and processes. As John Kocjan, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, explained, “Improving customer interactions is an effort for the entire organization. Banks should consider how all of their operations and priorities, even those like cost efficiency and data security, support a great customer experience.”
That said, many banks will also focus on reshuffling their product mix to generate increased revenue, particularly from fee-based businesses. One such area is wealth management, where competition is likely to intensify in 2014 and potentially hurt profitability, unless asset growth favors everyone alike. This could mean scale will become all the more important, benefitting large wealth management providers. Smaller shops could fend off competition through better customer service and attractive pricing, not just for wealth management services but for other banking products as well, especially with business clients.