THE ROLE OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN RETAIL BANKING AND THE RISE OF FINTECHS

Abstract

We are part of historic changes in terms of profoundness and velocity in all industries and in customers’ expectations. The aim of this paper is to create an overview of a new age in customer experience generated by a banking environment disturbed by the raising of Financial Technology. Firstly, the article is reviewing the customer experience concept from academic and practitioner perspective. It is making a literature review and additionally is bringing into attention the common elements of customer satisfaction and service quality which are considered an antecedent of customer experience. Furthermore, it is reminded that the latest developments in communications and information technology are intensely changing customers’ demands and expectations resulting a total transformation in the way that customers are interfering with the service providers. Secondly, is debating the subject of how financial service industry should balance customer experience expectations, considering that the banks are activating in an environment disrupted by the raise of distributed ledger technology, machine learning, big data analytics, roboadvice and other technology/digitalization proliferated by the FinTechs. Lastly it is analyzed how European regulatory bodies are seeing and managing the new technologies and FinTechs, how agile should be in an ecosystem that is very dynamic and governed by a customer with a lot of choices, good or bad, risky or non-risky, in front of his decision.