Hi Alysson, tell us about yourself and your background.
My name is Alysson Rodrigues, and I am a Product Manager, and Digital Business Senior Analyst at Banco do Brasil (Bank of Brazil), the most traditional bank in Brazil with over 200 years of operation and one of the biggest financial institutions in Latin America. I’ve been leading digital projects for Banco do Brasil’s mobile app since 2017 — when I started further studies on Customer Experience, User Experience, and Digital Product Management.
Banco do Brasil’s app is currently one of the best mobile banking apps among digital banking solutions on the market, with more than 15 million monthly active users. Also, our mobile banking is considered a Latam benchmark for financial solutions and usability.
How did you start working in the customer experience space?
My path in CX started when I became Product Owner of our main mobile banking app. When I started to manage our customer’s needs and feedback, I realized that I had to go further into customer experience in order to deliver the best solutions for our clients. Because of that perception, I started to study CX metrics and review our strategy for new digital solutions.
What do you think the top priority should be for a company that wants to improve its customer experience?
The top priority for a company that wants to be CX-driven is to integrate the ideal and practices of customer satisfaction into the main processes of the institution.
In my opinion, to develop a CX-centered culture, it is necessary to bring the customer to the center of the development process — which means to observe them using the products, to ask them what their expectations about the services are, and to search for constant feedback about what the main value or benefit provided is.
How can companies better listen and understand their customer base?
Nowadays, companies can access feedback and information provided by customers in order to improve services they want to keep using.
To achieve that goal, the first step is to prioritize customer data analysis intentionally on important decisions – and to use that data in decision making. It’s essential that CX teams are fully integrated with Design and Data Teams in order to catch useful insights and identify what customers really want from the company’s services.
Many companies are currently undergoing digital transformation processes – what are your tips on a successful digital transformation?
In my experience, a successful digital transformation process begins with a clear sight of which step or customer need is the most relevant to start with. In Essentialism, one of my favorite books, Greg McKeown, tells us about the difficult art of choosing a little piece of huge problems to focus on — and to keep focusing on each little part until the whole challenge is finally achieved.
Well, I see digital transformation as a complex process to begin in some traditional organizations but – with my experience at a 200-year-old bank – it’s a path that is built one step at a time. If I have to suggest an action to begin with, I would say that preparing business analytics with the most important customer metrics for your company will save you a lot of time.
What are some CX companies/solutions you’re keeping your eyes on right now?
Lately, I have been focusing my attention on task manager apps and digital tools for advisory (from financial to entertainment ones). I understand that digital solutions which summarize information and make some customer journeys easier to be completed could be considered more when it comes to the top preference for some customers.
What are some of your tips for people who want to work in the CX sphere?
I encourage them to analyze in detail the main needs of their customers and also to keep an eye on brands and companies they admire. The job of a CX professional is based on a continuous curiosity about how people consume and interact with services (before and after the contact with their companies’ solutions).
So many things changed in 2020. While some things are going to return to “normal,” what are new trends and habits you think will stay with us in the long term?
Talking about my experience living in Brazil during the pandemic, I would say that digital interaction will be reinforced as the main way to access services for a bigger part of the population. In Brazil, we see an improvement in new digital users for different markets which wouldn’t consider digital services (such as mobile banking apps) as a secure or useful option to access a service.
From now on, I imagine that customers will be more selective of offline interactions or processes that cannot be solved online.
eCommerce boomed in 2020, and consumers started leaving more product reviews online. How can we make the most out of this momentum?
Consumer feedback could become an important source of data if there is a structured process to extract relevant information from. It is known that reviews and digital footprints are both a good way to understand what customers say and do when interacting with our services.
When it comes to online reviews, the amount of available data could be astonishing. But I would say to focus on extreme users in the beginning to identify the major aspects both on positive and negative perceptions. It would be a good point to start understanding how your customers see your company.
What is your favorite CX metric? Why?
It’s difficult to point to one favorite CX metric because each project will have specific goals to be measured. I usually adopt Churn Rate and CES to identify steps that could be considered as high effort for customers to improve satisfaction or conversion rate. Starting with these two metrics, it is possible to clearly identify possible quick wins to refine your company’s services and to raise customer satisfaction.
