Digital Collaboration in Banking Industry

Ashish M. Shaji

04 Sep, 2020

The banking industry has been evolving at a rapid speed. Growing customer expectation and demand is one of the reasons that have caused its evolvement at this pace. In pursuit of serving customers better, banks have realized the importance of technology, and therefore terms like “Digital Collaboration” have started gaining momentum.

What do you mean by Digital Collaboration in banking?

Digital collaboration means the use of digital technologies for collaboration. The fickle nature of the banking industry prompts them to stay on their toes with innovation to facilitate business continuity and to satisfy customer expectations.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, customers have restricted them to their homes and are working from home. The brick and mortar bank branches closed, and many operated with curtailed face to face operations. Therefore banks had to restructure their way of working.

New methods of serving customers have been adopted, and with the use of technologies, banks have ensured that customer experience doesn’t suffer. This is where digital collaboration has saved the day for the banking sector.

Integration of digital collaboration to improve process workflows

Banks have increasingly focussed on automation for facilitating business process digitization. The potential of automation has been greatly realized by banks, and it is safe to say that machines are going to perform more of work in bank functions and activities. It will increase capacity and free employees to focus on other essential tasks that are of supreme value.

The technologies with employees for collaboration have been limited to basic communication tools. These are disconnected from actual information flows relating to work processes, and the lack of integration may hurt their productivity. Embedding digital collaboration in the process workflows can unlock the employee productivity, and the result of scaling up the entire global banking sector can generate billions of dollars.

Digital collaboration into process workflows can help in the following ways:

• Increased transparency throughout the process;
• Immediate access to expertise and documents relevant to the process; and
• Real-time updates and reporting.

How does digital collaboration satisfy customer expectations of 24*7 and frictionless services?

When the Covid-19 pandemic was severe globally, people were encouraged to use online banking^[1]. As per information from a banking consultant, which works with some of the largest banks, there was a 200% increase in new mobile banking registrations in April, and its traffic rose by 85%.

The challenge before banks is balancing customer needs with the cost of personalized support. With customers becoming increasingly younger and comfortable with technology, their expectations have risen to the next level, placing strain on the sector.

Today, customer experience means serving customers at all times in their banking journey. Banks have the opportunity to provide better customer experience by progressing from one and done interactions to create continuous engagements with their customers. With the use of AI chatbot technology, banks can improve customer experience.

Is digital collaboration the best way forward for the banking industry?

 In highlighting the relevance of adopting digital channels and self-service tools like chatbots buoyed by conversational Artificial Intelligence, banks would be better able to serve a wide range of customer queries, and it will also protect them from fraud and scams.

For instance, a collaboration by banks with digital technologies can provide them with the services of conversational AI, which is a computer program that engages in a conversation with humans. It can be deployed in a way across multiple channels to engage with customers, thereby addressing their needs.

Such self-service tools can work anytime and solve customer queries in a concise and timely manner. It may not completely replace the need for a human in the banking sector, but it can help banks work in a way that enhances customer experience. It can also improve employee experience as service employees can handle less but higher level service tasks.

This example highlights how digital collaboration can benefit banks, and with the Covid-19 pandemic, people have onboarded digital banking at a faster rate, and they may continue with it if their expectations are constantly met through digital technologies. 

What can the banking industry do in order to make full use of the opportunity offered by digital collaboration?

Banks can proceed with the following steps if they want to make the most of the opportunity offered by digital collaboration:

• Identify the process that can be improved with digital collaboration

It will require banks to map out all core bank processes and prioritize those with the biggest potential for uplift from digital collaboration.

Banks require examining the operating metrics of all business processes thoroughly. They should compare performance to their own KPI targets and metrics across the industry, especially with respect to customer satisfaction.

• Know the required technology

In order to make most of the digital collaboration, banks must know which technology is required to redress the inefficiencies and enable further collaboration. Tools should be implemented in the best way possible.

• Promote User adoption

The banking industry should promote digital collaboration to the next level, prioritizing training and should demonstrate its importance within the broader digital efforts of the organization. 

Conclusion

Read our article:Digital Banking Transformation – Future Path of Banking