Quality experiences are consistently surfacing as one of the biggest priorities for customers when they are engaging with businesses. This is even more true when it comes to banks, as consumers have higher standards when conducting financial interactions.
With global mobile spending expected to reach $728 billion by 2025, it is more important than ever for financial brands to lay the groundwork for having the right strategies and technology in place to meet and exceed consumer demands through positive experiences. To do so, it is critical that banks recognize consumer expectations regarding mobile commerce and real-time payments, understand consumer preferences, and integrate an omnichannel strategy that will ensure prompt and seamless interactions.
Below are four findings banks need to keep in mind when establishing and maintaining relationships and providing positive experiences to their customers:
Customer experience directly correlates to the standard of customer support
We know that good customer experience is vital as one-third of consumers who had a negative experience with a bank would rather go to the dentist than interact with that same brand again. One of the best indicators of a consumer’s satisfaction level is the standard of support they receive as 33% of consumers who had a negative experience also received poor customer support. Long wait times were by far the biggest proponent of poor support (73%), followed by confusing instructions, and trouble understanding the employees.
Ensuring high-quality support is a crucial step in the consumer-bank relationship as one simple interaction could potentially cause a loss in future opportunities. To shield against long wait times, banks can ensure they have the right technology in place. This can be done by implementing two-way customer support that will allow these brands to quickly and easily answer consumer questions or solve their problems, all on various channels that will be at the customers’ fingertips.
Each customer has their own preferred communication channel
Understanding preferences and being able to converse with someone on their preferred channel is essential to almost all consumers, 90% to be exact. Financial brands need to continuously evolve their customer communication methods in order to provide a positive customer experience. Whether the consumers want to interact on SMS, chat apps, or social media, these brands must have the ability to adequately communicate on all channels.
This new level of communication is now a requirement for consumers and can only be done successfully through an omnichannel strategy. Many businesses have already implemented multichannel communications – the ability to deliver content or support to a few channels – but this does not provide the seamless and inclusive interactions that omnichannel supplies to all of a brand’s channels. This is where the right technology partner comes in.
Security must be robust, but also fast
While quality support and the ability to converse on various channels are important, the speed of these responses is just as pivotal with SMS being proven to be the quickest channel. Take two-factor authentication (2FA) or banking alerts for example. Almost half of all consumers prefer SMS for these quick interactions compared to phone calls or emails and this number increases dramatically to 70% for Generation Z and Millennials.
Think about when you are waiting for a code to log into your account and more than a minute has gone by so you may ‘request a new code’ only for the first one to finally be delivered and be invalid. This delay will cause 41% of consumers to consider abandoning their pursuit so the ability to immediately deliver a 2FA SMS is crucial. Implementing an AI-powered routing system will enable banks to maximize delivery speeds through a proactive and adaptable network. This system can understand the priority of the message type to ensure time-sensitive information is being delivered promptly to the recipient.
Fintech solutions can make banking interactions simpler and more secure
Banks can go one step further by incorporating fintech tools and solutions that enable immediate and secure payments. As a consumer, have you ever hesitated to provide your banking information when making a purchase, but didn’t think twice when the brand was integrated with a third-party payment platform? 41% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when they’re able to do so through another platform including PayPal or ApplePay as they view it as being more secure.
Similar fintech tools should also be incorporated for real-time payments as this option is important to almost half of consumers. But these payments need to be secure as 86% of individuals want banks to confirm their identities through SMS for bigger purchases in order to help stop unauthorized usage of their banking information.
Financial institutions must incorporate technology that puts them in the best position to create positive customer experiences. By prioritizing customer support, engaging on preferred channels, and ensuring fast response times, brands can ensure a quality bank-consumer relationship throughout the entire journey.
