It’s still a little hard to get used to. For a number of years this would be the week I would make my way to the Big Apple, the financial services mecca of North America, to attend #CRMEvolution. The event used to take place in a hotel right in Times Square. There was always a flurry of activity all around.

At NexJ, we take great pride in being a responsive vendor. This is a big part of our value proposition – our desire to be a strategic partner who contributes to our clients’ success. If you’re making a software purchase, I strongly recommend you factor vendor responsiveness into the decision making process. It’s an invaluable intangible. So what exactly do I mean by ‘responsive vendor’?

It’s 3:45 a.m. and my alarm is screaming at me to wake up. I reach for my phone to stop the blasphemous racket. By instinct, I manage to shut it off but the noise keeps blaring. I realize that I had set the alarm on my tablet as well. Good thing too, because that's the alarm that brought me to my senses. As someone predisposed to staying up late rather than waking early, the hour is more familiar for being the end of a day than the start of one.

In my recent blog, Customer-Centric Digital Transformation, I discussed the strategy for ensuring the customer is at the center of digital transformation. Today, I’d like to discuss one particular channel, the Contact Center. 

I'm not a developer. I don't work with code, and though I use computers every day, I don't understand what's running in the background. But that's okay, because I'm a writer instead. So I spend a lot of time asking developers about their process and trying to understand how they do what they do and why. Fortunately for me, they tend to be very patient people.

In any industry, like financial services, that relies on maintaining deep relationships with their clients, it’s critical to understand and service the client across their entire journey. Successful client experience solutions focus on features across what we call the “The Customer Lifecycle.” 

For some, it’s about reducing costs by modernizing the back office.  For others, it’s about leveraging disruptors within their enterprise.  For NexJ, it’s all about the customer.In the age of the customer, the customer is in control of their journey.  They dictate how and when they will interact with the firm.  

On October 10, 2014 at NexJ’s client day, Julie Ask (@JulieAsk), Forrester Research analyst and co-author of The Mobile Mind Shift, spoke to our customers about the behavior changes occurring as a result of the adoption of smartphones and apps. 

Next week, I'll be flying to London, England, for the Customer Experience Exchange for Financial Services. The Exchange is a meeting of senior executives responsible for the design, development, and delivery of customer service strategies and solutions. Bringing together a range of exclusive experts from the Financial Services industry, this conference provides valuable information on current and future trends in customer experience.

Today, we’re going to take a quick look at scheduling, a fundamental feature of a financial services CRM solution. It’s a necessity, however, many companies only give a few cursory questions about it in most RFPs we see. It’s a mistake to assume that all scheduling is alike. 

Like every other interaction with business these days, customers expect client onboarding and new account opening to be fast, efficient, and easy. Traditionally, onboarding in financial services has been a paper-based process not known for its efficiency. We’ve all had an experience that went something like this: “I need to ask you some questions … 

Siebel was a great product. At least it was when I worked there 10 years ago. But it hasn’t really kept up with the times. What began as an innovative solution to firms’ customer management problems has become outdated. New technology, interaction channels and complex regulatory requirements have changed the way that financial institutions need to operate.  What firms need today is modern and flexible technology to keep up with market changes, and CRM specialized for financial services as @kateleggett of Forrester and I discussed in an American Banker webinar last year.