Relevant banking is offering the right products to the right customer at the right time – and it has a market value in the trillions.

That value will come from banks' improved ability to personalize services, create distinctive omnichannel experiences, and innovate rapidly.

"The potential for value creation is one of the largest across industries, as AI can potentially unlock $1 trillion of incremental value for banks, annually," according to McKinsey.

It's also about giving customers – and potential customers – opportunities to bank without having to think about it, in a frictionless way.

Yet, many banks have not delivered a seamless digital experience to their customers, let alone offer the highly personalized experiences that consumers are looking for.

There are two keys to providing personalized offers: data and the ability to make sense of it, Forrester says. "Customer centricity will rise or fall based on the data, analytics, and application of AI to predict and seamlessly act on potential customer risks and needs."

But some bankers have difficulty using data they already have to entice existing customers to buy more of their product offerings. For example, a small business account holder might also need retail services. Offering additional products to existing customers based on what you already know about them has the potential to expand "share of wallet" across product lines exponentially. 

Doing so depends on knowing your customers, not just having data about them.

Banks collect data, or have the potential to, on every customer transaction, whether that happens in person, online, or on mobile apps. But how they use that data can be a mystery. More and more, banks, fintechs, and enterprises are sharing data they have about users – so they can offer consumers personalized options that serve their unique needs and circumstances.

All of this data is how banks and fintechs will make relevant banking ubiquitous – the more they know about customers, the more they can reduce the friction of conducting life's business. According to a SalesForce report on the connected customer, 52 percent of customers expect personalized offers. Worse, 73% of customers say they will abandon a brand if they have three negative experiences. 

In addition, "… customer experience is the new driver of brand value and competitiveness in retail payments," Accenture wrote in its report "5 Big Bets In Retail Payments in North America."

Consumers could feel creeped out about that much of their data being bandied about. But relevance is key to removing that creepiness, because when it's personal, it's what a consumer wants. Relevance changes the experience to deliver exactly what the consumer wanted. It's not about them; it's for them.

To create these frictionless transactions and to offer consumers the best experience possible, banks have to use their customer data stored across silos and even subsidiaries. 

Serving customers with relevant products using that much data almost certainly means that machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) will be involved.

Some off-the-shelf AI vendors, Coveo included, combine personalization data with existing data from customer data platforms (CDP) and beyond. Obviously, the more connected data and platforms, the more effective the AI-powered personalization gets, as signals captured on one digital property will inform your personalization strategy everywhere.

This also allows banks to provide relevant customer service experiences that go far beyond returning good search results to anticipating questions customers will ask and showing them the answers to questions that they didn't know to ask. 

The keys to making every customer experience relevant and useful is:

• site search that returns relevant results to queries
• suggestions for content that customers haven't yet asked for but may need
• chatbots that understand the words in a query as well as the intent behind them
• customer service representatives who have access to customer details as they begin speaking to them and who can quickly and easily find information that will answer customer questions and anticipate customer needs. 

Essential to this is understanding customer needs – even if the customer doesn't always know to ask the question. 

Again, having data – the right data – is key. Tracking what a customer does on a website and comparing it to what others have done in the same situation is a powerful tool that helps personalize the banking experience.