Customer experience in financial services is undergoing a profound shift. The rise of digital banking, the ubiquity of mobile channels, and the integration of AI are reshaping not just how customers interact but how they expect to feel while doing so. During JourneyTrack’s CX Day 2025 panel, “Journeys That Matter in Financial Services,” industry leaders from First Horizon Bank and First Command Financial Services shared candid insights into what’s working, what’s not, and what it really takes to deliver journeys that earn trust and drive measurable impact.
Moderated by Ania Rodriguez, CEO of JourneyTrack, and hosted by Claudia Panfil, JourneyTrack’s CMO, the discussion featured Strat Parrott, VP of CX and UX Design at First Horizon Bank, and Rich Keeler, VP of Experience Design at First Command. Together, they peeled back the layers on CX transformation in one of the world’s most complex, high-stakes industries.
When asked which customer journeys matter most in financial services today, both panelists pointed to one foundational truth: self-service and transparency are no longer optional.
For Rich Keeler, empowering clients to complete key tasks, like opening an account or transferring funds, without friction is central to building trust. “Anything that clients can do themselves, we need to get right,” he explained. Yet, he also emphasized the importance of freeing advisors to focus on value-added interactions, not process-heavy tasks. “We want to let the advisor focus on our clients… and ensure customers can act when they need to, any time of day.”
Strat Parrott echoed the sentiment, highlighting that connecting digital and in-person experiences remains one of the biggest opportunities in banking. “As a full-service regional bank, we’re thinking about how to make those transactional moments more personalized—allowing bankers to move into that advisory role,” he said.
One of the most overlooked journeys, he added, is service recovery. “When someone’s experiencing an issue, how you handle recovery can move them from a detractor to a champion of your brand.”
It’s tempting for financial institutions to release every shiny new feature in a vendor’s off-the-shelf toolkit. But according to Rich, that’s a trap. “Just because it’s there doesn’t mean your customers want it,” he cautioned. “If a feature doesn’t solve a real problem, it’s clutter.”
Strat agreed, and added that many banks fall into “fast follower” behavior, reacting to market moves rather than grounding decisions in actual customer needs. “We see organizations adding features without understanding whether they serve the client or the business goal,” he said. “You need both lenses.”
The solution? Cross-functional collaboration early in the process. When product, operations, compliance, and CX teams come together to define customer and business goals, rework decreases and ROI increases. Ania added that some of JourneyTrack’s own clients have seen major breakthroughs when mapping journeys across silos—such as combining digital and branch perspectives for unified transfer or mortgage experiences. “That’s where the biggest ‘aha’ moments happen,” she said.
In an industry obsessed with “reducing friction,” Strat introduced a contrarian but powerful idea: not all friction is bad.
He described a scenario where First Horizon intentionally slowed down part of its customer feedback process by inserting an extra question. “It forced users to think about their response,” he said. “That simple moment of pause led to more accurate, actionable insights.”
Rich agreed, noting that “good friction” helps customers make confident decisions, especially in financial contexts where trust and clarity matter most. The key, he said, is intentionality: “We want customers to think, not struggle.”
Among the biggest “do’s” from both leaders was the art of listening at scale.
Strat’s team learned this firsthand when they enabled ratings and reviews within their digital banking app, a feature that hadn’t previously existed. “We were afraid the feedback would be overwhelmingly negative,” he admitted. “But we were wrong.”
Instead, reviews skyrocketed from a 1.3 to a 4.8-star average, and the qualitative feedback became a goldmine for continuous improvement. Even better, the team began responding to reviews directly, creating authentic dialogue. That move has since extended to Google reviews, where First Horizon now sees a surge in positive sentiment for in-branch experiences—a clear signal of growing customer engagement
For Rich, listening means embedding “active listening posts” across channels, from call center audits to direct user testing. “There’s nothing better than sitting next to your end user and watching them use your tools,” he said. “You’ll always walk away thinking, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”
Both leaders agreed: listening isn’t enough without action. Every piece of feedback should feed into a measurable improvement cycle, whether it’s reducing completion times, resolving pain points, or boosting satisfaction scores.
Financial services CX leaders know the tension well: risk and compliance teams often act as brakes on innovation. But as Strat explained, success lies in bringing them into the process early, not fighting them later.
“They’re focused on protecting the company and the customer,” he said. “When we invite them in early, we gain alignment faster and even uncover opportunities to simplify operations.” By co-creating with risk and compliance, First Horizon streamlined terms and conditions and introduced more visually intuitive disclosures—proving that regulation and innovation don’t have to be at odds.
Rich agreed: “When you co-create, they have ownership. They’ll help you find the right path instead of blocking it.”
When it comes to proving CX impact, both panelists rely on a balance of qualitative insight and quantitative rigor.
First Command uses Forrester’s journey measurement framework, pairing transactional and relational CSAT with operational metrics like call handling time and application completion rates. Meanwhile, First Horizon combines design-led journey testing with iterative data collection to track improvements over time.
As Ania summarized, “It’s about connecting the dots between loyalty, cost savings, and revenue growth—and showing how each journey improvement ties back to measurable business value.”
Both organizations use JourneyTrack as their single source of truth for journey governance. Strat called the Journey Atlas his favorite feature: “It lets us visualize how journeys connect across teams, products, and stages. It’s helping us speak a common language.”
Rich added that First Command uses JourneyTrack as its “dictionary of journeys,” defining seven key moments that matter: from onboarding to client transfer, and aligning teams around them. “We’re still in the crawl phase,” he said, “but it’s already changing how people think.”
Watch the full replay of “Journeys That Matter in Financial Services” here.
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