son, on the phone, or using the latest technology. It’ s the job of banks to fit customer lifestyles, not the other way around, for both retail and commercial customers. Providing an intuitive and easy self-management experience to commercial users over the digital channel is key.
4. Customers want to spend less time banking. They want an experience that’ s fast, convenient and intuitive, wherever and whenever they desire.
Transforming your customer experience means finding the technology to address each of these demands.
1. Offer Personal Financial Management: While banking generates huge quantities of data by nature, masses of raw information are of little use to your customers. They require actionable insights into their financial position, their cash flow, and how they can achieve their personal finance goals.
Personal Financial Management( PFM) gives people easy to use tools that make financial insights more accessible and financial planning more convenient – all driven by the transactional data you already collect. From budgeting and creating savings goals to spending and security alerts, PFM can be a transformative tool for consumers, with a real impact on their day-to-day banking and overall financial position.
As a bank, delivering the best customer experience means shifting from utility provider to service provider. Retaining customers and maximising profit means forming lasting relationships. Providing PFM allows you to do both, offering more value and also taking on the role of a trusted advisor.
In addition, PFM tools generate their own data that can be used to provide a holistic view of every customer. With a deeper understanding of how customers use their money, you can identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities to increase profit and deepen relationships.
2. Enhance Customer Service: A deep relationship with a customer isn’ t just about understanding their financial position. It’ s about removing all the obstacles that get in the way of clear communication – especially when problems occur. In the event of an issue, frustrated individuals and time-short corporate customers simply want to talk to someone as soon as possible.
However, in banking, we all face the challenge of balancing speed and simplicity against security. With so many different ways to access banking, from smartphone applications to web browsers, it is no surprise that authentication processes have grown more complicated and time-consuming than ever before. Security has become a barrier to communication and a barrier to digital banking adoption. The right technology can reverse those perceptions.
For example, consider a customer who is transacting online when something goes wrong. Typically, they will be asked to call a helpline, where they’ ll be subjected to lengthy authentication processes. When they eventually explain the problem to your representative, they’ re likely to be transferred to an appropriate team – often more than once – and the process starts over. Suddenly, a quick call for help turns into a repetitive, frustrating afternoon.
An integrated approach solves this problem. When you use technology to tie your various systems together, a customer could simply click a‘ Help Me’ button to contact a representative who already understands the problem, has all the relevant customer and transaction information and therefore can tackle the real problem immediately.
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Offering a unique and personal customer experience is the most important tool that regional banks have to compete against big players
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Enhancing your customer service builds closer relationships and positions you as a supportive, always-accessible bank. Most importantly, that’ s something that larger banks can rarely offer as well as their smaller counterparts. Proper digital channels technology is the best enabler of such an expedited and efficient enhanced customer experience.
3. Embrace Wearables and New Interfaces: Today’ s customers come with a multitude of different devices and methods of communication. Ever-advancing technology puts products and services on the desktop, the smartphone screen, and even on the wrist. An effective way to compete in banking is to leverage these technologies to offer a cohesive and seamless customer experience across a wide range of devices. Keeping up with the constant evolution of the mobile landscape can be a daunting and difficult task for mid-size banks, and it will certainly become a matter for survival in the near term in order to stay competitive. Therefore, choosing the right partner to provide the digital technology is one of the most important decisions that can shape the success or failure of a regional bank.
For customers, it’ s a matter of control and autonomy. When they buy a new device, they expect to be able to access banking with the same convenience they would access sending a message or browsing the internet. Your customers want control over how they bank – and it’ s your job to keep up with all of the different possibilities and technologies.
Wearables in particular represent a new opportunity for banks to make life easier. In today’ s busy world, the ability to check a balance or carry out a transaction on a smartwatch is a compelling proposition that can be used to attract new customers or increase the perceived value offered to existing customers. It’ s financial service provision at the speed of life.
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