To drive your organization’s digital transformation journey, you need to both activate your frontline staff, and engage your customers. This is accomplished by leveraging an effective training and learning tool that activates your frontline to become digital ambassadors, while providing nimble support tools that help both staff and customers migrate to digital.
Build staff training into your technology project plan.
It’s never too early to start developing your training and development assets to support your next technology rollout. However, two weeks prior to go-live is certainly too late. Project managers and executive sponsors should develop and test a digital banking curriculum in advance of roll out and begin training all frontline staff on how to use the tech before it is launched to the public.
Use smart tech to train tech.
The old ways of training have proven ineffective in today’s fast-paced, social, and video-driven world. Studies have proven that game-based learning with built-in incentives and inherent motivation, as well as interactive role-plays and visually-appealing learning modules are the most effective ways to reach today’s employees. Make sure your next training system includes these innovative elements.
Encourage feedback from your team.
As your staff tries out the tech, either in-house or out in the real world, explicitly ask for their feedback on the customer experience. What can be improved? Which features are hard to understand or non-intuitive? What additional features and functions are desired? Where do they stumble when using the tech?
Visions Federal Credit Union has created a digital advisory board made up of a dozen rank and file employees, which meets monthly to discuss consumer behavior trends, review prospective vendor partnerships, and provide feedback on the institution’s use of consumer technology.
“They’re not necessarily managers, VPs, or SVPs,” says Tom Novak, Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Visions Federal Credit Union. “They're day-to-day employees that are in the know about what's happening in technology, social media, and typical consumer lifestyles. They understand why people are on TikTok more than Facebook, or why they use Venmo instead of traditional PayPal mechanisms.”
Provide your staff and customers with the right support tools.
Even post-training, your team needs the right tools to support your customers. Provide them with access to technology walkthroughs and simulators, so they can easily find quick tips and features to help customers calling in or visiting a branch. Ensure your learning solution provides staff with knowledge that is always at their fingertips, and always up to date.
Allow your customers to “test drive” the tech before they commit.
Change is hard on your customers too. Be prepared to coach them along the journey, whether it is a new digitally-based product or service, or an upgrade from a prior solution that they have grown comfortable with over time. Give them a chance to try before they buy. Above all, provide them with a safety net through easy-to-use, shareable, technology walkthroughs and simulators to make the learning part easy.
The Bottom Line
The race for digital dominance in banking has begun, and financial institutions have a short window of opportunity to join the competition. But while banks of all sizes are making significant investments to transform their technology in order to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers, the biggest hurdle often comes in the last quarter of the race. Every leg in the relay is important, none more so than the human component.
To achieve success in your digital transformation journey, you must leverage the power of your people. This demands a well-considered deployment strategy that places intuitive learning and technology support squarely at its center. New, innovative learning and development tools make these processes less intimidating, easy, engaging, fun, and flexible. Leverage these tools to empower and engage your internal digital fanatics, support your customers in their adoption journey, and finish strong in your race to digital dominance!
