Regional Spotlight: Customer Experience-Led Cost Reduction in Asia Pacific Financial Services

Unlocking Efficiency and Value in APAC’s Digital-First Financial Landscape

The Asia Pacific (APAC) region stands at the forefront of digital innovation in financial services. With its high mobile adoption, rapid fintech disruption, and a patchwork of regulatory environments, APAC’s banks and insurers face a unique set of challenges—and opportunities. In this dynamic context, elevating customer experience (CX) is not just a differentiator; it’s a strategic lever for cost reduction, risk mitigation, and sustainable growth.

The APAC Advantage: Complexity Meets Opportunity

High Mobile and Digital Adoption

APAC leads the world in mobile banking and digital payments. In markets like India, China, and Southeast Asia, mobile-first consumers expect seamless, 24/7 access to financial services. This digital maturity enables institutions to shift routine interactions to self-service channels, driving down operational costs while raising the bar for customer experience.

Regulatory Diversity and Local Nuance

Each APAC market—Australia, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and beyond—enforces its own compliance standards and consumer protection laws. This regulatory diversity demands flexible, locally attuned solutions that can scale across borders while remaining compliant. Financial institutions must balance efficiency with responsiveness to evolving regulations.

Fintech Disruption and Competitive Pressure

A vibrant fintech ecosystem is reshaping customer expectations and intensifying competition. Challenger banks and digital-native platforms are setting new standards for speed, personalization, and cost efficiency. Incumbents must accelerate their digital transformation to remain relevant and cost-competitive.

Publicis Sapient’s Approach: Experience-Led Cost Reduction

At Publicis Sapient, we believe that world-class customer experiences naturally lead to streamlined operations. Our frameworks, honed through deep regional expertise, help APAC financial institutions achieve operational efficiency and superior customer value by:

Proactive Issue Resolution: Leveraging analytics and AI to anticipate customer needs and resolve issues before they escalate, reducing inbound call volumes and operational overhead.
Smart Channel Management: Redirecting simple queries to digital self-service channels—such as chatbots and mobile apps—while ensuring complex or high-value interactions are handled by skilled staff. This is especially effective in mobile-first APAC markets, where digital engagement is high but expectations for human support remain strong.
Employee Enablement: Providing frontline staff with unified, intuitive tools that consolidate customer data and enable rapid, accurate service. This reduces training and handling time, improves employee satisfaction, and lowers turnover—a key concern in high-turnover APAC contact centers.

Real-World Impact: Case Studies from Across APAC

Transforming Service Operations in Southeast Asia

A leading APAC bank partnered with Publicis Sapient to overhaul its customer support operations. By analyzing customer intent and journey data, the bank introduced interactive self-service options and proactive digital touchpoints for common issues. The result: reduced call center volumes, improved customer satisfaction, and a more resilient, cost-effective service model tailored to the region’s digital-first, mobile-centric customer base.

Digital-First Innovation in Thailand

Publicis Sapient worked with Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) to launch XPlatform, a cloud and DevOps solution that accelerates digital banking product development. SCB also expanded into new verticals, such as food delivery, leveraging a scalable cloud infrastructure to drive rapid feature releases and new business growth—all while maintaining operational efficiency.

Employee Enablement in Australia

In Australia, Publicis Sapient helped a major bank consolidate 14 disparate employee systems into a single interface. This reduced training time, decreased turnover, and shortened customer wait times—delivering both cost and experience benefits. Our lifecycle-led design approach helps banks balance operational efficiency with next-level customer engagement, supporting financial well-being across the customer journey.

The Framework: Service Design and Human-Centered Design

Our approach is anchored in two transformative methodologies:

Service Design: Examines the entire customer journey, identifying inefficiencies, duplicative processes, and “zombie” channels that add cost without value. By redesigning these journeys, banks can eliminate unnecessary steps, reduce error rates, and streamline operations.
Human-Centered Design (HCD): Immerses teams in the user’s world, ensuring every solution is intuitive, accessible, and frictionless. This reduces the need for support, minimizes operational bottlenecks, and creates experiences that customers—and employees—love.

Actionable Steps for APAC Financial Institutions

Map the Customer Journey: Use service design to identify pain points, redundancies, and opportunities for automation or self-service.
Invest in Human-Centered Design: Ensure every digital and human touchpoint is intuitive, accessible, and aligned with customer needs.
Leverage Data and AI: Analyze customer interactions to predict needs, triage requests, and personalize support.
Empower Employees: Equip staff with unified tools and information to resolve issues quickly and effectively.
Pilot and Scale: Start with high-impact journeys, measure results, and scale successful approaches across the organization.

The Path Forward: Sustainable, Scalable Transformation

Experience-led cost reduction is not a one-time project—it’s a continuous journey. As APAC banks and insurers streamline operations and improve CX, they reduce costs, free up resources for innovation, and create more loyal, engaged customers. Those who master the art of experience-led, data-driven transformation will define the future of financial services in APAC.

Ready to unlock new value in your APAC operations? Connect with Publicis Sapient to start your transformation journey.