How can Customer Experience be improved in Digital Banking?

Ashish M. Shaji

21 Nov, 2020

With the advancement of technology, banks have been vying to provide the best customer experience to their customers. As they say, the Customer is the king; therefore, all forces are in a race against time to please its customers. In this article, we shall find out how better customer experience be provided in Digital banking.

What are the expectations of customers from Digital banking experience?

In order for us to know how better customer experience can be provided, we should first find out what customers expect from digital experience in banking.

As the days progress, customers’ expectations are also evolving and growing. They have started to demand from financial service providers in a way like never before. They expect banks to focus on creating an experience culture that facilitates trust, their needs, and expect it to exceed their expectations.

Some of the key expectations of customers from digitized banking are mentioned below:

• Simplified process

Customers expect their banks and financial institutions to provide simplified digital platforms that can be accessed easily. The simplified the process, the more customers will find it easier to operate various features.

• Real-time assistance

Real-time assistance is what customers are looking for. Getting real-time assistance also helps in building loyalty for banks. Banks can provide it by using live assistance tools such as co-browsing and video chat.

• Personalized services

You would have heard the term “tailor-made”.  Customers are seeking tailor-made services, which means getting products and services as per their needs. It can help the customers enjoy a lively customer experience that suits them.

• Data security

Well, nothing is as satisfying as knowing that your data is safe. Data security is one of the critical aspects when it comes to banking. Customers want to have peace of mind while sharing sensitive data with the bank. Therefore if banks can assure customers about data security, then half the battle is already won in terms of meeting the expectations.

How to enhance the customer experience in digital banking?

By combining the best of humans and high tech, digital banks can offer the best customer experience. However, it may not come easily to banks to provide great customer experience and, at the same time, fulfilling all requirements of the digital transformation era.

Hence, we bring to you strategies to ensure improved customer experience in digital banking:

• Seamless multichannel experience

Banks must create a multichannel experience and move away from finding the optimal channel mix. They must look to find what works best for each customer.

• Proactive engagement

Banks must look to be proactive in respect of helping customers avail opportunities faster, in minimizing their risks and providing compelling insights. The banks should instill a sense of awareness among its customers regarding its products and services, and it must be proactive in collecting customer feedback, which will help banks in identifying the gaps between their relationships with customers. 

• End to End Digital Onboarding

Banks must look to provide end to end digital onboarding. Customer onboarding experience begins with the application for a new service and continues until the customer is highly engaged with this relationship.

A consumer expects ease of completion of the process, and the ability to use security, authentication that will make the entire process easier.

• Provide Real-Time assistance

Mapping the customer’s banking journey is an effective way to gain a detailed understanding of customers’ experience. It will allow banks to discover usual customer queries, gain insights into how they can improve the customer journey, and help them in knowing customer expectations better.

Based on customer queries, banks can provide real-time assistance, which will ensure quick solutions to their customers in real-time. This way, they can also help customers with the complex banking application process.

• Deploy Chatbots

In order to serve digital customers, banks need to move beyond FAQs to Chatbots. Using chatbots have a direct impact on customer experience as it is the best channel that allows banks to automate their simple and routine tasks. As part of the growing expectations of customers, they expect faster support and 24*7 availability. Chatbots can deliver instant support to customers and engage them. It can also provide personalized information about customers and also help them with financial advice based on data.

• Use of Big Data and Analytics

Understanding the customers can make a bank head into the right path, and it is also the foundation for a competitive advantage in digital banking experience. Big data analytics is an essential component in enhancing banking experience and making business decisions. With the help of analytics, banks can gain insights to evaluate opportunities and segment customers to better deliver digitized banking customer experience.

• Use of tools like transparency, security, and trust

Customers are more likely to stay where there is transparency in the overall process. They want to feel confident and tools that promote these three elements, i.e., transparency, security, and trust, combine to provide a great customer experience. In turn, banks profit out of it as customers recommend their products and services to others.

• Make the customer feel valued

This could be one of the underrated points for improving customer experience, but its mention is noteworthy. Customers like to see them being valued by the bank, and that expectation goes up as the times progress. Banks must make customers feel valued by addressing and resolving feedback from each customer.

• Enhance the mobility of products and services

With more and more people adding to the count of digitized banking consumers, the banks require enhancing the mobility of products and services. A poorly performing mobile application can turn away potential customers. This is something that the banks of the world can’t afford to happen.

• Never stop improving and enhancing

That extra yard for providing excellent customer experience could be all you need to bring about a breakthrough, therefore never stop improving and provide a better experience to your customers across digital channels.

Essential points to remember while intending to improve on customer experience in digital banking

In the pursuit of providing an improved customer experience, the following points must be taken care of:

• While you are seeking to improve on the aspect of customer experience, make sure that you respect the laws and regulations provided for digital banking. Ignorance or negligent conduct towards law can have serious consequences. Make sure that you are working well within the legal boundaries lest you be caught unaware.
• There is a serious risk of exposing consumer data while looking to provide a great customer experience. You would want to relax certain limitations in a quest to provide the best service to your customer, but be very cautious that you are not leaving sensitive consumer data vulnerable to hackers.
• Digitized banking is all about technological aspects that require proper handling; overdoing might affect your reputation, and you end up degrading the customer experience rather than improving it. Therefore be professional even when upgrading your services.

Conclusion

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