One of the outcomes of the Financial Services Royal Commission hearings, without any regulatory changes, is a growing understanding of the need for financial services providers to make it easier for customers to get their desired end result without unnecessarily complex documentation or processes.

Whether you call this improving the customer experience or design thinking the issue is the same: how do you change your products, services and organisation structure to ensure that you satisfy the true needs of your customers during their different life stages or financial circumstances.

Sometimes this just needs a business to provide the product or service as advertised, without unauthorised fees.

In other businesses, adopting a customer-centred mindset means reviewing your branches, your website or specific processes to ensure customers get what they want flexibly and efficiently.

Sometimes this mindset will have a strategic and systems impact.

The major banks have appointed Customer Advocates to give customers a voice.

Changes to your processes for loans or deposit transactions or financial advice may have compliance implications but often compliance can be achieved with flexible thinking.

Remember, borrowers don’t really want a loan, they want a home or a car.

They want complaints listened to and resolved.

As customers age they want their family to be able to help them with financial matters.

When a customer dies their family wants their assets and liabilities efficiently transferred.

The challenge is how that is done to give customers greater choice and control.

Open banking will accelerate the pressure to improve the customer experience.