Banking on technology: enabling an omnichannel approach in financial services
Unless you’re best friends with your bank teller, you’re probably one of the millions of people who don’t like the hassle of going to the bank. For most of us, a visit to the bank is boring and inconvenient at best, and extremely frustrating at worst. It’s really no wonder that today’s consumers want banks to revamp their customer engagement. Service providers in other industries are finding new and innovative ways to deliver what customers want, when and where they want it. Banks should be no exception.
Today, forward-thinking financial service providers are stepping up to meet customer expectations. Customers want to bank at all hours—in their pajamas at home or on the go with their kids. This means having multiple channels for them to choose how they bank, whether it is in the branch, at home or on a mobile device. And not only that, they want to pick up right where they left off to continue the journey whenever they want regardless of what touchpoint they start with.
More and more, the most successful banks are providing more seamless, integrated customer experiences across all touchpoints. This involves ensuring transaction continuity to deliver on three customer expectations: flexibility, synchronization and customization.
Flexible banking is the new norm
It’s Sunday—your local bank branch is closed. Just a few years ago, this simple fact inevitably meant it would be impossible to transfer money or open up a new line of credit until tomorrow.
But today, this kind of limited service is simply not an option for banks. Customers expect choices in how they bank, whether it’s at the ATM, at their local branch or through a mobile app.
But mobile apps, while crucial, are not enough as a standalone digital tool – they aren’t fully replacing the old model. The local, physical, brick-and-mortal bank branch is still a valuable sales channel.1 For all their tech savvy, millennials still want the opportunity for personal interactions with their banks. And it’s not just millennials—banks’ older customers still strongly prefer visits to the bank to mobile apps. This is especially important in Europe, where older demographics are a significantly larger part of the population than in the United States. But to complicate things even further, the experiences across these distinct touchpoints need to be unified while playing to the strengths of individual channels that offer different functionalities. Having multiple channels is not enough—banks need to provide solutions that are not only secure, private and transparent, but are also synchronized. This is the omnichannel approach—continuity between all customer touchpoints.
Synchronized experiences drive customer loyalty
Imagine you’re logging into your bank’s website. You’re presented with an offer to open a savings account, which you reject. A week later, you visit your local bank and the teller asks you if you’d like to open a savings account. You log back into the bank’s website a few days later and are again presented with a similar savings account offer.
No wonder consumers are fed up with their banks. Today’s consumers expect their service providers—including their bank—to remember their preferences and decisions. That means not repeatedly presenting them with stale offers twice. They expect personalized engagement that keeps them connected to what they care about.
Studies indicate that customers who interact with their bank both in-branch and through digital channels find that the two experiences are not well integrated.1 Customers want to bank seamlessly from whenever and wherever they want, regardless of the platform they use, their location, or what time of day it is. This means that customers should be able to pick up where they left off on one channel and continue or complete an action without having to start over. Banks with this “zero drop rate” are able to manage across all touch points by synchronizing all channels so that, when customers make a decision, they only have to make it once.
Customized marketing for increased sales
Providing personalized banking services tailored to individual customers is not a new concept. Customers want personalized suggestions for relevant products, which also drives more profitable relationships for banks. For example, a customer who just bought a home might be receptive to an umbrella insurance offer. Every time a customer interacts with a bank through any channel, there is an opportunity to capture customer preferences, behaviors and decisions.
All of these interactions generate data, amounting to massive stores of customer data each year. Recent technological innovations in cloud computing, big data and advanced analytics are enabling banks to transform the vast stores of data at their disposal into actionable insight for more personalized engagement.
Banks increase customer loyalty by offering targeted services based on an individual’s current needs and buying history. Empowered with individualized knowledge of each customer, banks can improve engagement and keep customers coming back.
Driving customer loyalty requires more than being multi-channel
It isn’t enough to have personalized services or multiple ways for customers to engage with your bank—it’s important that customers can start engaging with a bank through one channel and pick right up where they left off through another. By delivering a personalized, seamless customer experience, banks can increase competitive differentiation and drive customer retention.
VeriPark Next Best Action, built on Microsoft Cloud Technology, combines predictive intelligence with up-to-date customer data from all channel interactions to support banks aiming to become truly omnichannel. The solution collects customer data from a wide variety of customer contact points, including email, mobile apps, service center calls, in-person interactions, and ATM. Using the big data and advanced analytics capabilities of Cortana Intelligence Suite, VeriPark Next Best Action aggregates and analyzes data from all these sources to recommend the optimal next action to take with a individual customer. Gone are the boring, repetitive offers that customers would see across every channel.
Real-time recommendations drive the customer relationship across both inbound and outbound channels whenever and wherever works best for customers. These recommendations can be delivered across relevant touchpoints to provide targeted customer service—whether it takes the form of credit card, mortgage offers or simply thanking a customer for opening a new account. With VeriPark Next Best Action, customers no longer have to reject the same offer three times or restart a transaction from scratch. This kind of personalized and seamless experience is becoming the norm. Banks that deliver it are poised to succeed.
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Sources
1 Accenture, “US Retail Banking in the Digital Era: A Critical Balancing Act”
