- Blog
Onboarding: the latest battlefront for competing banks
Why superior customer support is crucial to winning
These are interesting times for the banking industry. Evolving technologies, disruptive fintechs, tighter competition and savvier, more demanding customers are causing rapid changes in the market. This new reality creates unprecedented challenges for incumbents. That's why improving customer experience has become a big target.
There's ample evidence supporting the idea that superior customer experience is a key differentiator in a field where all competitors' offerings are roughly the same. Exceptional service contributes a lot to a bank's market share and return on investment.
Clearly, that service begins with customer onboarding. As the customer's first impression of a bank it's the key perception builder, so it has lasting significance. Yet many banks are struggling to make the online application process a smooth one. Signicat, an identity assurance provider, surveyed 2,000 consumers to find out what they underwent when applying for financial products at traditional institutions. It found that a shocking 40% of all online applications never get finished.
Figure 1: customers regularly abandon applications
Many of those customers abandoned their applications because it took too much time or they had to go to another channel when they sought help. Yet integrated customer support — a little hand-holding when customers need it — could tackle most of those issues.
Let's take a look at the major challenges that impact online account-opening processes.
Banks can tackle these challenges. The key is to have a digitally-enabled end-to-end onboarding process — one informed by intelligent analytics — that integrates customer support. Customers don't like leaving their preferred channels, and especially hate bumping from online to a phone or a branch. Breaking the continuity of the process adds to customers' exasperation — and frustrated customers abandon applications. In the Signicat survey, 55% of respondents said they would be more likely to seek a product if they could complete applications entirely online. Here's how to capture those potential customers with a smooth application process.
Figure 2: how to capture potential customers
Make it easy by reducing documentation
Use available technology to help customers complete applications with minimal effort. Digital tools such as Intelligent Optical Character Recognition (OCR ) and Natural Language Processing (NLP ) can extract customer information from ID document images and auto fill applications. As well, banks can now integrate third-party data providers and their own internal systems for existing customers to avoid asking customers for more data. When customers absolutely must submit a document, banks must make sure they can do so via digital channels and in the form of photos, PDFs and so on. The goal is to help them avoid offline channels, such as going to branches or sending letters by snail mail, as much as possible.
Hold your customers' hands
Customers love self-service and independence. Still, it's critical to offer integrated support at every step of online onboarding. Customers should never have to dial a number or go to a branch, if they have a query. A good platform can offer:
Remember, though. While features like conversational AI will prevail as banks automate basic responses, human agents should still be available to handle more complex questions.
Automate decision-making and processing
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has improved a lot in the last five years. It can now automate the review of data that customers submit. It can even automate the decision-making process. It can also identify and directly flag inconsistencies or information gaps so customers can follow up promptly. Spotting such exceptions helps agents deal with them, too. Machine learning underpins this and ensures the AI continues to learn and improve.
Similarly, the dynamic workflows that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) produces can automate middle- and back-office tasks such as contract and party record creation. This reduces turnaround times, cost and the volume of customer calls. More important, the tool also increases customer satisfaction and application completion rates.
Be transparent, set expectations and communicate proactively
The right communication at the right time is the key to meeting customer expectations appropriately. Talk to your customers on their own terms, through their preferred channel. Some favor push notifications through an app. Others opt for in-app chats, text messages, emails, outbound calls, video chats and so on. Banks must reach out proactively to customers regarding:
Don't rest: Keep improving the customer experience
There's a great deal to gain from real-time insights into customer onboarding — and advanced tools can deliver the kind of analytics you need to take advantage of these insights. They help banks see how customers engage with every aspect of the application process. They can even clarify where the customer journey breaks down — and intervene when it does. By supporting product activation and usage they go a long way in preventing application leakage, dormancy — and in bringing a superior experience to customers.
Customers want simple automated application processes — to a point. They'll only use them if they get quick and effective customer support when they need it. Banks have to make that happen faster and painlessly. At the same time, the personal touch has never been more important — even if AI provides it in part. That's a fine line to walk, but with the right tools and expertise, banks can deliver improved customer journeys and profitability.