Employee Experience in Financial Services Depends on Search

As consumers, we’ve come to expect our search experiences on retail sites and mobile applications to be seamless. We aren’t thinking about search in terms of data or queries or keywords – we’re thinking of the thing we want to find and what we want to do with it. We remember the experiences that are personalized to us, and are more likely to come back when we feel understood.

Employees that frequently work with intranet search and knowledge management systems have come to develop this same expectation. In an industry like financial services, there isn’t just a desire for better search experiences, but a genuine need. Employees in these organizations need to be able to retrieve extremely sensitive and complex information swiftly and securely. They’re making decisions where the accuracy of the details has a direct impact on clients and the bottom line.

While this might sound dire, it doesn’t have to be. Advances in search technology can unlock simplicity in the face of complexity, and enable employees at financial services organizations to excel. We cover this and more in our most recent ebook, which you can download for free here.

In the meantime, here’s an overview of the most consistent knowledge management pain points in financial services, and how a smarter knowledge management system can accelerate relevance and reduce costs.

The search challenge in financial services

Financial services employees are in a uniquely complicated position. They are managing client experience, compliance regulation, security, product offerings, and more all at once. On a daily basis, employees like this often need help building loyalty to expand their service portfolio, staying up-to-date with regulatory compliance, capturing customer data, and ensuring the entire process is secure.

When search systems aren’t up to par, the pain mostly will fall to these employees. At worst, they won’t be able to find what they need quickly, they’ll waste time tracking down both people and information, and can be easily overburdened with unnecessary silos.

Double-clicking on information retrieval and security

Finances are often a source of extreme sensitivity and privacy. Short of medical records, employees in financial services are often working with some of the most sensitive sort of client information possible. This includes:

• Loans or credit score
• Bank accounts and financial statements
• Investment portfolios
• Insurance claim documents and records
• Internal experts such as investment advisors or brokers

Given this, the reality of financial services is that not all information is for everyone. Knowledge management systems need to, in turn, be nuanced in addition to being streamlined. Security should be considered in layers of document-level access and role-based authorization. These firms also need to have their knowledge management systems connected to fundamental security technologies such as a standard Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos and SAML, or other single sign-on systems.

A basic knowledge management system to handle all of the above isn’t going to cut it. In order to cover the bases and excel, financial services need a solution that goes a step further.

Enter semantic search

Not only can search be a salve for employee frustration, but semantic vector search can supercharge the financial services employee experience by directly addressing all of the above pain points. Semantic search is a form of deep learning technology that collects employee and customer signal data to accelerate the relevance of their search. This can supercharge the employee’s entire intranet search experience.

Semantic search is capable of complex query routing wherein no detail is too small, making varied permissions and document access a breeze. It also allows for automation to expand results returned to the user. This enables continuous iteration on available information with little manual input, which takes a significant strain off of operations. The summation of these capabilities ultimately leads to a stronger sense of loyalty from a highly improved employee experience – which directly impacts customers and client loyalty as well.

Interested in learning more? Our free ebook covers more on the capabilities of search as it relates to financial services, and how to measure success in your knowledge management system. Download it for free here.

If you would like a personalized walkthrough of how Lucidworks solutions can support your business, get in touch with us today.