The experience transformation underway at Standard Chartered

As we saw in the countless examples at Qualtrics’ WorkDifferent event, there are two critical capabilities that help set organizations and governments apart in our rapidly changing world.

First, it’s the ability to design impactful products and experiences that are centered around a deep understanding of consumer expectations. And second, the ability to continuously improve each of those experiences to meet the changing nature of what customers and employees expect.

Taking an experience-first approach is the way forward from the pandemic - regardless of whether a business is recovering or thriving right now. Organizations already on their journey to become an experience-centric business are leading the way in this new reality, providing countless learnings and best practices for companies embarking on their own experience transformations.

Standard Chartered, one of the world’s leading international banks with a presence in 59 markets and serving clients in a further 85, is one such organization finding success by investing in designing and improving the experiences delivered to customers and employees. Powered by the Qualtrics Experience Management (XM) Platform™, Standard Chartered is using customer feedback to proactively deliver superior customer experiences across every channel - in the branch, through the contact center, and over digital platforms.

The first step in Standard Chartered’s experience transformation

Standard Chartered’s XM journey started in 2019 with the simple goal of getting to know customers better. Within 18 months, the XM program has rapidly scaled to become a key pillar in the organization’s goal of growing its customer base. It’s evidence of both the value and growing importance of XM.

“One of the main reasons why Standard Chartered embarked on this experience transformation with Qualtrics was that it allowed us to look at multiple customer touchpoints and channels through a single platform. Similarly, it gave us a big opportunity to easily scale across eight key markets,” explained Aalishaan Zaidi, Global Head of Personal Banking at Standard Chartered.

From this starting point, Standard Chartered has expanded its listening channels with Qualtrics to ensure the changes it is making truly set it apart from competitors.

“Today, we get solicited and unsolicited insights in a holistic manner across a whole spectrum of data sources, from voice of customer through to voice of employee, partners, and future trends. It’s important that these insights are captured proactively and regularly. And most importantly, the insights must help us drive the design and continuous improvement of client experiences,” said Rosalind Ng, Global Head of Client Experience & Strategic Business Enablement at Standard Chartered.

Experience Design & Improvement at Standard Chartered

In an experience-driven world, which continues to change rapidly, Standard Chartered has been rewarded for rethinking its traditional listening programs.

“Customer experience is no longer just about the NPS scores you run on a six-monthly basis. You have to listen, and you have to respond instantly. In some places, Standard Chartered has already seen some big gains through our investment.

We’re now able to quickly and efficiently bring customer journeys to life, and then test and learn with them to ensure the products we take to market are primed for success. It also drives cost efficiencies because we optimize resources by focusing on high-value tasks,” explained Aalishaan.

Getting buy-in for experience transformation

When getting buy-in from the multiple markets across Asia Pacific it was important that each market had a clear understanding of the value it would get from the platform before investing.

“As everyone knows, change management requires a lot of effort. Therefore, the countries are only willing to do that if the change has a positive effect on the clients and the business.

I'm glad to say the results speak for themselves. To give an example, in India we’ve moved from getting feedback every few weeks to near real-time across multiple touchpoints and across various channels. These insights are being used to design training for our frontline employees," said Ros.

“In Singapore, we use Qualtrics to automatically resolve a poor experience by triggering engagements when customers report a bad experience in a branch. We also recently rolled out relationship management satisfaction feedback gathering for Priority Banking clients, which allows us to track the effectiveness of our engagements and take targeted actions,” added Ros.

Customer insights captured by Qualtrics are also playing a pivotal role in helping Standard Chartered not only improve its digital offerings as popularity for these capabilities soared after the pandemic, but integrate insights across the entire journey.

How to accelerate experience transformation

For organizations getting started on their experience transformation or looking to accelerate the work underway, Ros offers three pieces of advice.

“The first is to make client experience and insights a priority, not a nice to have. The second is to make it easy for people to give feedback. And finally, be proactive, be regular, and be timely in collecting, analyzing, and acting on those insights,” said Ros.