With large tech giants like Amazon, Google etc., slowly entering into the banking space with e-payment options like Amazon Pay and Google Pay, customer expectations from banking services are changing. In fact, as per a recent report by Bain & Company, 54% of global respondents would trust a technology company more than a bank with their money. Given this scenario, banks will need to innovate and act fast in order to gain new customers, improve revenues and stay competitive.
According to EY’s Global Consumer Banking Survey, “engagement is critical for competitive differentiation at a time when banking is largely commoditized. Better experiences, which are often the No.1 factor in achieving engagement, is a clear motivator for customers to switch banks.”
As per the above quote, one way to combat rising challenges from technological companies entering the market, banks must engage better with their customers. Banks need to engage through omni-channel touch points across branch networks, mobile apps and websites to retain customers and meet their demands. Apart from this, banks will need to prioritize business process transformation, use analytics to drive targeted engagement and offer personal recommendations based on what customers are talking about.
Today, customers expect interactions to be real time, highly personalized, and tailored to buying preferences, transactions history and behaviors. Apart from this, consistency is vital when building a true omni-channel process, but it is also essential to create experience based on a unified brand presence that customers can trust. To address this, banks must adopt tools and analytics that recognize market changes and shifts in buyer behavior, as well as scalable systems that enable fast action when opportunities present themselves. Implementing a digital technology platform carters to such enterprise (such as banks) requirements as well as customer expectations. To understand in greater detail, here are four ways banks can experience improvement in customer engagement fast with a digital technology platform:
- Starting the customer journey in the best possible way!
Most of us have been to a bank at least once in our life to open an account. The process of opening a bank account always involves filling a number forms, providing supporting documents and information. But that was a thing of the past, today the wave of digital transformation has led to most companies making even the customer onboarding process digital. A digital process makes the whole process faster in almost half the time! This means that customers don’t have to wait or spend large amounts of time in filling forms and the whole process of opening a bank account can be done in a matter of seconds. Infact, we’ve helped some of our clients’ onboard 2 million customers per day with our application and we’ve helped one of our clients’ onboard 100 million customers in 170 days.
- Automate time-consuming processes
Manual processing are often long and time consuming which lead to delays, dissatisfied customers and decreased productivity. One such manual process especially in banks is that of processing loans. With no control in verification process, huge expenditure on physical storage, maintenance and manpower are just some of the reasons that prevent loans from closing on schedule. In order to combat such long drawn manual oriented process, automation is key. Digital technology platforms help in automation that eliminates the tedious manual process of routing jobs, reduces costs and creates control in verification process. All this in turn leads to faster processing and higher customer satisfaction.
- Deliver integrated customer engagement
With customer experience taking center stage, it is becoming key for banks to send the right kind of messages to customers to keep them engaged. Adding to this, the complexity of ever-increasing digital channels and the present silo legacy infrastructure makes it increasingly difficult to keep up with the customers’ demands. This results in disjoint and inconsistent communications being sent. Implementing a digital technology platform helps bridges silos and acts a single unified hub to send the right communications and orchestrate seamless, personalized, experiences across any channel and device. Sending the right message to the right customer at through the right channel aids in building satisfied customers and improved engagement.
- Improve revenues by arresting leakage
Most enterprises just as in the case of banks are looking for ways to increase revenues. But often the opposite, that is, revenue leakage can go overlooked and result in big losses if not addressed in time. Customer fees and charges, interbank accounting, intra bank chargers, government and taxation are all areas that are subject to potential revenue leakage in banks. Solving this challenge can result in banks improving revenues and also increasing EBITDA!
In conclusion, for banks to remain competitive and stay ahead, it is important to focus on meeting customers’ expectations and keeping them engaged. This is possible by implementing a digital technology platform that can help banks automate processes right from the start of the customer journey of acquiring new customers to retaining existing customers through better engagement. With technology companies slowly moving into the financial services space, it is no doubt that banks will have to adopt agile practices and process to remain relevant, competitive and retain customers.
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