Customer experience in banking has been developing as an important concept. It is emerging as one of the topmost competitive differentiators. Since most financial institutions offer somewhat the same kind of services, customer experience acts as a key differentiator that allows for standing out from the crowd. Thus, delivering a seamless customer experience becomes extremely essential for financial institutions.
Therefore, having a proper customer experience strategy with long-term goals can have a positive impact on customer retention and customer loyalty.
As discussed above there aren’t a lot of competitive differentiators between financial institutions, particularly among banks. All the banks provide almost the same kind of services and consumers can rarely see any differentiation. Due to the low barriers to entry into the banking sector in the wake of the banking regulations, more and more financial players are entering this market including tech-savvy fintech companies. The market is filled with banking players including some of the global tech giant companies. Needless to say, banking is one of the most competitive forms of business where a customer can switch to a different bank anytime, they feel they are not getting the quality of service they expect. All the new-age fintech companies are currently focusing on improving specific banking services. In fact, tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Alibaba have also shown their interest in the financial markets. One thing common with all the fintech companies entering the financial services market is they all focus on the customer perspective. For e.g.: N26, a German neo bank focused on the problems customers face while opening new accounts. This allowed them to rise to a level where they were opening about 10,000 accounts in a single day. All the big tech companies have started focusing on the customer and creating their brand around the quality of customer experience they provide. Fighting with such big and trusted global players in the market on product differentiation gets increasingly difficult. In such a scenario, you need to compete on the basis of a superior customer experience if you want to grow and survive in this competitive market. If there’s one thing, we can understand from all this is that customer experience in the banking sector is the most sought-after competitive advantage that you can offer to fight the other players in this sector.According to a Forrester report, 2020, improved customer experience allows banks to grow their revenue by almost 32% and reduce customer acquisition costs by 32%. You have to provide a good customer experience for your clients if you want to stay relevant and grow in the market. Having a good customer experience would allow you to-
It has never been more essential for financial institutions to step up their game and go all-in with their customer experience strategy. Many leading global banks have already started branding themselves as the most customer-centric banks and claim to have a customer experience transformation within their institution. Nevertheless, the signs are clear. Customer experience is and will be one of the most important aspects of the banking sector.
Since customer experience has evolved as a key competitive differentiator today, banking institutions are investing highly in CX. All of this has led to a trend of providing customer-centric and personalized experiences in the banking sector. Currently, there are a lot of CX trends that are revolutionizing the banking sector. Here is a list of 5 such CX trends in banking-
Banks have been offering multi-channel services to their customers over the past few years. However, since then, we have seen a shift from multichannel to omnichannel services in the banking sector. Omnichannel service experience focuses on providing a seamless customer experience to all the customers across multiple touchpoints of their customer journey. The key difference, however, between omnichannel and multichannel service experiences is that multi-channel focuses on customer engagement while omnichannel service experience focuses on improving upon the customer experience. Omnichannel service experience aims at providing a personalized and consistent customer experience who are already engaging with your business.
With time and the advancement of technology, consumers have also become smarter. Customers today are more aware of personal finance as opposed to a few years ago. The general public has been showing a genuine interest in their financial wellness. However, a poll from National Foundation for Credit Counselling revealed that most of the customers don’t trust their banks in helping them with their financial wellness. It was found that most of the customers trust outside resources to get educated about financial wellness than their own banks. Naturally, the link between customer experience and financial wellness has been increasing over the past few years. This has been emerging as the latest trend in CX in the banking sector. Financial institutions have a big opportunity here to improve their customer experience by helping their customers achieve financial wellness and eventually helping them in managing their money in a better manner.
As we discussed above, due to the low barrier to entry, more and more fintech companies are entering the banking sector. The most common term heard around these days is a ‘neo bank’. These banks are entering the market with a set target audience in mind. They aim to connect with that audience using customer experience. The key problem being faced by traditional banks is they have no idea what set of customers wants which kind of services. These neo banks have entered the markets with the mentality of customers first and traditional banks are having trouble in engaging with their customers. However, this does not mean that traditional banks like yours can’t go forward with this approach. You need to start understanding your customers at the very core level. It starts with understanding what your customers want and how to engage with them. Understanding how to engage with your customers would provide you with the opportunity of improving upon your customer experience in a personalized sense. Community engagement is the best possible way for you to provide your customers with a good customer experience. They need a proper CX strategy and CX tools to help them with all the data and analysis regarding their customers which would eventually help them in providing a better customer experience. In order to manage your customer experience efficiently, you need a proper CX strategy and tools. It would allow for better data analysis of your customer, thereby helping in improving the overall CX.
Data plays one of the biggest roles in providing a good customer experience. Having access to relevant data and analyzing the data carefully can provide a lot of valuable insights. This can help you offer your services to your customers in a more personalized manner. Studies show that 86% of customers are willing to share their data in order to personalize their banking experience. Data insights would allow you to understand your customers in a better way. It would help in understanding the motive of your customers and how to engage with them. According to research, only 38% of banks consider their data strategy to be strong. It means that even after admitting the importance of data in customer experience, the financial services sector lacks in providing data-driven services. Doing so would allow you to have a significant impact on your customer experience.
Automation and AI have been at the forefront of customer experience. There’s no doubt in the fact that automation is highly important for providing a good CX. However, not everything can be transferred to digital means and there needs to be human intervention at all the touchpoints necessary. Customers like to talk to a human rep rather than an AI chatbot for multiple services such as home loans, credit cards, mortgages, etc. After all, customers are the center point of everything and there needs to be some kind of human intervention with the customers in order to build meaningful relationships with them. To have a higher customer satisfaction rate, you need to provide a human touch to your customers. Doing so would allow your customers to have a helping hand during any transaction with your company and contribute to a positive customer experience.
Digital banking constitutes a major proportion of the banking sector. Two years back, when the whole world shut due to the pandemic, digital banking rose faster than ever. Digital banking played a major role in helping businesses efficiently facilitate their financing operations. Not only top companies but SMSE’s could also easily facilitate their banking functions digitally. Digital banking has been increasing all over the world for many years. However, the pandemic allowed people to realize the ease of digital banking. The number of digital banking users has significantly increased since the pandemic. Banks have also played a major role in helping their customers conduct their banking operations digitally. As the number of customers in this space is increasing, it becomes essential for banks to put their focus on improving their digital customer experience. Digital customer experience in banking is extremely important to satisfy the customer today. Customers want to conduct their banking operations in the easiest possible way without any complications. It’s really critical for banks to optimize their digital customer experience by running regular tests and leading their data strategy with customers' needs at the center. It means from the time a user visits your website/app, they should be able to do everything efficiently and have a good overall experience using your digital banking services.
So far, we’ve understood what needs to be done and why it needs to be done. Let’s dig deeper into how it can be done. Here are 6 steps to creating an effective customer experience program-
To provide your customers with a good customer experience, you need to understand the needs of your customers and accordingly develop a CX strategy. With the help of surveys and customer feedback, you can discover room for improvement in your customer experience strategy.
Another important statistic shows that financial institutions collect about 70% of CX data but only 59% is acted upon. It refers to the under optimization of the data due to the technological limitations financial institutions face. Survey2Connect is one such tech platform that provides its customers with data collection and analytics in a completely optimizable manner.
Automation is a great step towards creating a seamless digital customer experience. AI tools like predictive analytics and sentimental analysis can help you discover your customer needs. It would allow you to reach the right set of customers at the right time. Chatbots are yet another example of customer service automation. According to different reports, many people prefer to interact with AI over humans, especially during the initial phase of customer service. Automation can help you solve all these problems and create an overall good customer experience.
Capturing customer feedback would be of no use if you don’t act on it. CX tools allow you the functionality of raising a ticket anytime negative feedback is captured. All customer engagement can be easily tracked, thereby making it easier for you to take action on these complaints accordingly. Actively tracking the complaints, taking action, and closing the loop would be a great step towards an improved customer experience.
To build a great customer experience program, you need to be flexible to the changing trends in the market. Being stuck on technology might have some benefit in the short run but that strategy is bound to fail in the long run. A customer experience strategy should be flexible and adaptable as to change its course of action whenever required.The best CX strategy is the one that focuses on the “customer experience” rather than the “strategy”.
A satisfied employee is far more likely to provide good service to your customers than an unsatisfied employee. Therefore, you must keep your employee experience in check along with customer experience as well. Especially the front-line employees that directly deal with customers should have a good experience at your institution and be satisfied. Capturing employee feedback timely would allow you to service your customers as well in a better sense. Survey2Connect is one such platform that allows you to capture both employee and customer feedback.
Customer Journey Mapping allows you to identify all the touchpoints of the customer. For eg: In the banking sector common touchpoints are checking balances online, making an online payment, and looking for statements. This would allow you to understand your customer personas and their needs. It would be beneficial in understanding the engagement level of customers with your institution. Continue with this and you’ll be able to identify touchpoints where a majority of customers are facing issues, allowing you to solve that issue at the earliest. It would also help you personalize your offers to your customers thereby helping in providing an overall good customer experience.
A financial institution with great customer experience ensures a constant and flexible customer experience strategy is in place. It is important to regularly track and update your CX strategies to provide a seamless customer experience. Survey2Connect is used by some of the world’s most trusted companies including BMW, Dubai Asset Management, Max Health Insurance, and have been successful in managing their customer experience efficiently over the past years. Survey2Connect provides a one-stop solution for all your experience management needs. With S2C you find the right answers to take timely actions. Get in touch with us for a demo.
