Knowledge graphs – Augmenting customer acquisitions for wealth management

Financial service relationships have always been built upon trust, which unlocks deeper and more resilient relationships between the brand and its customers. The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report states that brand trust is the second-most important factor (behind price) in customers’ consideration. Eighty-one percent of the respondents say personal vulnerability (around health, financial stability, and privacy) is a reason why brand trust has become more important. The report goes on to say that 61% say they respect and appreciate when brands spend money to keep them informed about what they’re doing to help others during the pandemic.

According to our World Wealth Report 2020, HNWIs believe that BigTechs can outperform incumbent firms when it comes to information access and value-added services; 74% of them report a willingness to consider BigTechs’ wealth management offerings. Also, they are least satisfied at touchpoints related to personalized information, and more than 60% reported unsatisfactory experiences in accessing information about new offerings or market information.

With the role of brands in the lives and society widening, customers are expecting increased access to the information regarding products, brand purpose, and activities. Our research indicates that when there is higher volatility, a premium is rewarded on personalized, timely, and intent-based information made accessible for the investors. All of this shows how seamless information access can present opportunities and increase customer loyalty for the wealth management industry.

Today’s customer journey starts with a search. Customers no longer visit a branch to explore. Instead, they seek information right at the moment of the search, using search engines or the brand’s website. While customers take few clicks to reach the site, thanks to Google, Bing, or Alexa, from there on, the firm’s digital assets need to be optimized to provide answers, redirect them to relevant pages, encourage them to probe further and take relevant action.

Websites’ internal searches have become more important than ever

Customers, after landing on your page, begin searching further with complex queries meant to address a specific need. The Forrester blog “SEO And Site Search: Not Quite The Match Made In Heaven,” states that “users who are performing a site search are more likely to convert, generate more revenue, and return again,” with conversion rates estimated between 40% and 250%.

From the internet’s earliest days, websites have had a site search function, but it didn’t progress beyond a direct data-base lookup. This meant that if your customer’s query did not exactly match the phrase your system was using to categorize all the website’s information, they will effectively get no results.

As consumers increasingly expect direct answers – both from search engines and your website – creating a robust and personalized search experience must be at the center of your digital strategy.

For example, a customer who navigates to your website looking for a “financial advisor for retirement planning near me” shows strong intent to purchase the retirement products. You need to provide local information catering to the intent i.e., connect the customer with the financial advisor who has an expertise in the retirement solutions based on the customer’s geographic location, and complement with a clear call-to-action to choose among various retirement products. From these, the landing page should also provide a way for the consumer to ask more questions, until they are ready to take the next steps.

By answering directly to the queries and leading the customers to a clear call-to-action, the intent can be cashed.

This requires wealth management firms to reshape the search experience using knowledge graphs and AI technologies. In addition, firms must look at having a comprehensive search experience strategy as a part of their overall customer experience strategy.

Knowledge graphs create a structured layer of data for the discovery services that can provide accurate, consistent, and optimized information for your clients on top of the unstructured layer of data, by seamlessly integrating with the large information entities. A carefully thought structure will improve discoverability of information for the customers and guide them to your landing pages, ask more questions, and move towards the call to action.

With knowledge graphs, firms can hyper-personalize the search experience to serve the needs of existing and prospective clients, gain new customer intelligence by analyzing user search queries, and decrease the overall customer acquisition costs.

Along with our partners Yext and Adobe, Capgemini is helping our financial services clients redefine their customers’ search experience.