“The convergence of support and media facilitate a transmedia business process, where conversation with the customer can be ‘activated’ based on a push not alert, notifying the same that his last wage payment reaches the minimum required for a highly profitable deposit, performing also a retargeting action by reminding him when consulting their balance in the bank portal, or when withdrawing cash from the ATM. This is transmedia marketing, a strategy in which we contribute by cross-selling on any type of asynchronous notification sent to the customer”, said Ros, regarding one of the firm commitments of the Catalonian brand for 2012.

“If we want to sell we must be extremely relevant for the interests of the customer, micro-relevant as we say in Latinia. The customer is very selective with the financial institution when interacting with the same, that is to say, he utilizes indistinctly any channel; that is a great achievement of the last decade, but that fragmentation, which offers convenience to the customer, is not effective/profitable for the bank if the information flowing through the different channels (the customer) is not well integrated. That integration is the first step in order to really place the customer in the center of our strategy. It is useless to have the best mobile application if the information enhancing it does not have continuity, such as two hours later, when the customer fixes his eyes on the screen of an ATM and grants us his attention, always scarce, for only 45 seconds. That time span is a window of opportunity for “speaking” with the customer”, continued the person in charge of marketing of Latinia.

“An essential goal for a financial institution should be to improve the connection between the office and the other channels, in order to generate and deliver a more efficient and complete multichannel experience. The silo-based multichannel system, due to the lack of integration, creates a very inconsistent customer experience that derails any effort for executing a customer centered strategy”, concluded Ros.

As Ros says, “we should note that what we are talking about is not, at least from our end, of Twitter as an open-channel for corporate communication as is used universally today, albeit incipiently, with many initiatives”. Latinia strictly proposes the use of Twitter as an alert channel, via direct messages (DM), where the convenience of the clients prevails, being able to choose which channel to use to receive status of their accounts, cash withdrawals, etc., whether via SMS, push-notes or Twitter. In Latinia we have called it ‘tweet banking’. To this respect, Latinia has introduced the latest innovation of its infrastructure product LIMSP© during this past year, after the implementation of push notifications, working on opening to new asynchronous channels on its service delivery product line-up.

Twitter, will have – and really already has – a greater presence in financial institutions, but the majority only use this channel to transmit contents, principally Press Releases and other corporate information. This limitation is due to inertia and its own characteristics as a channel where the tendency is for open communications, something over which the brand has little control of. Latinia opens another means, as the company understands Twitter to be another channel of choice based on the axiom of getting personalized and relevant information to the client, over and above the specific technological limitations – 140 characters and, in the case of DM, a daily limit of sent messages. Such information is of private nature, which is why Latinia has chosen to work with DMs and not with open communications.

Moreover, Latinia talks of tweet banking as the company did of SMS Banking, e-mail banking, instant banking, etc., on their day. The unstoppable proliferation and fragmentation of channels to help the financial institutions manage their business is a challenge equal to the potential it represents, and moreover, Latinia is very comfortable working with asynchronous channels. Twitter is still, though less and less, associated with young users, indeed future banking clients, but similar to the 35-44 year-old band where the take-up is massive. With tweet banking Latinia proposes the use of this channel based on the unequivocal, private relationship between bank and client – it is enough for the latter to be a follower of the former-, enabling the sending of private and personalized contents, with no one else being privy to them.

About Latinia

Latinia is an independent software vendor (ISV), which specializes in infrastructure product development for asynchronous type corporate notifications (mobile or instant messaging, email, Twitter’s DM, push notifications), utilized mainly by leading and distributed globally financial institutions (banks, savings banks, processing and payment systems), public institutions, government and service providers, leaders in their respective segments and industries.

For more than 10 years now, Latinia (created in 1999) has been focusing its efforts of innovation on discovering new possibilities offered by the so-called asynchronous channels, and in transforming simple events into notifications and subsequent multichannel messages (alerts). Using an onion as example, LIMSP© is adding layers of value to an initial core, thus transforming it into a business opportunity, converting each message into something unique for the customer, due to the relevance attached to the same and based upon the context in which it arises.

More information available through http://www.latinia.com/contact/

“Not only have emerged elements in the demand made its addition into a channel’s offering obvious, the very important bias in sales smartphones already represent or the popularization of flat rates tariffs, have pushed entities to focus on the App format. Its incorporation is above all in line and coherent with how financial entities understand that they must work in the future, providing elements which improve the convenience and availability in the relationship with their customers. We now not only resort to the most ideal channel to communicate with them, but within these channels, they can and we can, always choose the best option, which best fits the customer, considering their availability. Entities are focusing on applications and their potential complement, the push nots (PNS), which allows us, as specialists in asynchronous channels, to break down our contribution to the Bank by leveraging greater value to its range of financial applications. Apps go from being reactive to the client’s initiative, to becoming equipped with elements that allow them to communicate with their customers”, added Pérez.

Functionally and technologically the push nots (PNS) add important security and traceability elements to the communications of the financial entity. Reading the contents of the received push not may require logging into the entity’s application, and this operation allows you to know if the client has read the message. Until now one could only know if the message had been delivered but not read. On the other hand the push nots (PNS) overcome the classical limit of characters in text messaging, extending the space by up to 60% more, “a wider window” to say things, to be more relevant with our content, and not just be strictly informative.

“Customer experience is built through and based upon all the points of contact, of all the interactions that the financial institution has and adds with its customer, direct or indirectly, and is measured upon three variables; products purchased, channel use, and life cycle with the financial institution, which is basically our track record with them. Of all these, the good use given to the channels, especially the remote ones, represents an excellent way of providing a better experience of and to the customer, given that this is where a greater margin exists for generating that wow, in order to exceed expectations that the customer has not usually projected”, remarked the person in charge of marketing for Latinia.

“The banks that seek to correspond or exceed the expectations of their customers should understand the importance of managing direct channels with excellence, of the coherence, integration and synchrony of its contents with the remaining channels. By centering on customer satisfaction and not on their experience can result in the loss of business focus for an entity, causing it to believe that it has a competitive advantage that is neither real nor sustainable, creating an ambiguous perception of capacity to retain customer loyalty when that is not actually the case”, according to Ros.

“The idea that we live in a fully multi-product and multichannel environment has generated a false belief in market feasibility where ‘everything is offered to everyone at any moment’, when that is something that makes no sense, given that we already have tools that enable us to transfer ‘the appropriate content to the adequate person, at the exact moment, and in the correct context”, finalized Ros.