Centric Consulting talked to Fifth Third Bank, in a video interview with CDO Magazine about how banks use data to provide better customer service.
How do banks use data to provide better customer service? That was the question Centric Consulting Senior Manager Chris Galligan posed to Jude Schramm, CIO of Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Bank, in a video interview recorded by CDO Magazine.
“We think of data as strategy and a value proposition for our customers,” Schramm explained. “For example, we use data about where customers shop, how they spend money and more, to present back to them products and services that might be interesting to them. We provide better customer service using data about what people use every day.”
However, Schramm stressed that as a regulated industry, bankers can never sell or give away customer data. The goal is not to profit directly from customer data, but to use it to increase “customer agility.”
“For example, we can use AI to think about what the next thing is that you might need from us and then provide advice on things to consider,” Schramm explained. “We use data to create greater awareness of products and services and then align them to your needs.”
As just one result, Schramm noted that Fifth Third customers no longer receive mass mailings. Instead, the bank now targets messaging directly to specific customers.
“Customers are now opting out of receiving our messages less, and our penetration with them is growing,” he said. “It’s all about finding that value proposition—the match of where you are financially with our products so that customers can keep moving along with us.”
When Galligan asked Schramm about data challenges, he cited the need to balance data protection, keeping up with data and paying for data storage.”
“It’s one of the harder challenges I’ve seen,” Schramm said. “Protecting customer data is always top of mind.”