Mai Momani is a seasoned professional in the field of Client Experience (CX) leadership and enthusiast. She is responsible for crafting and executing comprehensive customer engagement strategies across various channels. Mai excels in launching initiatives to strengthen customer relationships and enhancing retention levels. She has been instrumental in driving organizational transformation towards a customer-centric culture, consistently at the forefront of this endeavour.

Mai’s expertise lies in spearheading CX transformational change by prioritizing the human element in delivery models, fostering innovation, and implementing process re-engineering programs. Currently, she holds the position of Head of Client Experience at Invest Bank. In this role, she is accountable for overseeing the development and implementation of the bank’s CX strategy and framework across all channels.

Throughout her career, Mai has also made significant contributions to renowned organizations such as United Arab Bank, First Abu Dhabi Bank, and Arab Bank. Her track record demonstrates her ability to build and lead highly engaged customer-facing teams.

Recently, Mai spoke at the Middle East Banking Innovation. After the event, she spoke to Eventible, about her role as the Head of Client Experience at Invest Bank, the challenges she faces in delivering exceptional client experience, her collaboration strategy with other departments in the bank and more! So let’s get started.

● Can you please provide an overview of your role as the Head of Client Experience at Invest Bank ?

Currently, I’m serving as the Head of Client Experience at Invest Bank , a UAE-based bank established in 1975. I’m responsible for executing the bank’s CX transformation agenda by leading the client engagement, complaint resolution, contact center and retention departments. My role is focused on driving positive
business outcomes for customers and providing them with exceptional customer experience across all digital and physical channels.

● What are the key factors that contribute to a positive client experience in the banking industry, and how do you ensure that Invest Bank delivers on these factors?

i.) Offer personalized services: Customers do not want to feel like just a ticket number or an account number. It upsets them when they are not treated like a person or receive boilerplate treatment. Organizations must realize that one size does not fit all. Customize your offerings.

ii.) Listen to your customers: Paying attention to customer feedback includes looking back over past data and listening in real-time. Show customers you hear them when they take the time to speak to you. Listening increases the chances that you’ll hear your customers’ real problems and can effectively solve them, resulting in happier customers.

iii.) Be proactive: Going the extra mile is one of the most important things one can do to deliver great customer service. It is at this point that have ticked all the boxes. Being helpful means anticipating your customers’ needs before they even have to articulate them. In fact, sometimes customers may ask for one thing without realizing that they really need another. Organizations must anticipate their needs
and provide for them.

At Invest Bank, the customer service principles that we adopted across the enterprise are based on the above pillars and inculcate the same across all customer interactions. This ensures consistency of service and a unified tone of voice.

● In your opinion, what are the main challenges in delivering exceptional client experience in the financial sector, and how does Invest Bank address these challenges?

The top 3 challenges in today’s banking landscape are:

i. Keeping up with emerging technologies.
ii. Blending in-person and digital experiences for the customer.
iii. Overcoming data silos.

At Invest Bank, we are implementing a strategic Omni channel approach that isn’t a difficult rip-and-replace process which takes months to implement. We can add new channels that integrate with existing platforms and are flexible enough to scale and adapt as customer needs change.

When it comes to interacting with a bank, we have to be available across channels that our customer wants to interact with us, whether in person or digitally. Our focus has been to integrate in-person and digital interactions to create a holistic experience that helps build relationships with customers. To achieve the consistent experiences, customer data needs to flow between platforms and channels seamlessly. 

Our data platform allows us to create complete customer profiles unifying the data from different sources, give us a full view of the customer’s journey and how they interact with the bank on different channels. This enables us to tailor our communications to the customer’s preferences and behaviours.

● How do you collaborate with other departments within Invest Bank, such as marketing, operations, and IT, to align and deliver a consistent client experience across various touchpoints?

In order to create differentiating customer experiences, organizations must foster purposeful collaboration with key roles across the customer journey and identify the same as the starting points for collaboration — the minimum viable partnerships to establish that will help your organization work toward CX success.

One must start by understanding the objectives, span of influence and ownership of various departments to determine which groups are best positioned to contribute and add value to customer experience initiatives. Organizations should expand collaboration beyond customer-facing roles.

 Best-in- class CX organizations take a more distributed approach to collaboration across multiple functions rather than focusing collaboration with a select few departments. Different teams can provide insight into the operations, feasibility, employee experience and value analysis of customer experience initiatives such as IT, finance, HR and marketing.

At Invest Bank, we hold a monthly CX Forum that is attended by all members of the bank’s management committee. In this forum, top customer complaints and feedback received across all business segments are tabled, discussed and deliberated. This forum has enabled the management committee better aware of the ground realities and their role in achieving the bank’s CX vision.

● How does Invest Bank differentiate itself from other banks regarding client experience? What unique value propositions does the bank offer to its clients?

At Invest Bank, our CX vision articulates how we will bring our expression of customer obsession to life. Our CX vision is rooted in our organization’s brand, inspire employees to take action, and tell employees what to do to support consistent delivery of the bank’s desired customer experience. We have extrapolated from our CX vision, an employee-facing statement or model that describes the experience Invest Bank intends to provide to customers to help bring the expression of customer obsession to life for them. This vision will empower employees to deliver the “Invest Bank Experience” in all their customer interactions.

We are aware that customers have many options of banks available and so, we can no longer treat a customer relationship as one and done. We are always thinking through the overall experience from start to finish and to repeat. Customers hold the power in the relationship and as long as this is true, companies will have to be laser focused on the experience through a combination of personalization and customer-centricity. This realization and willingness to act on this realization is the Invest Bank unique selling proposition.