During times of remote work, a clear channel strategy enables our clients to complete transactions and build the community that people need. Their brands are enhanced, and channels provide a route to essential knowledge sharing.
Consumers expect businesses to step up and offer them individualized services no matter the vertical. Despite years of aversion to this concept, the banking industry is forced to adapt or risk being passed over. We help our clients develop long-lasting relationships with customers, which provides consumers with what they want, not just what they need.
The philosophy that goes into an omnichannel approach goes beyond expanding the number of ways that customers interact with their bank. The method aims to make all of their interactions seamless between channels and provide a consistent face for your institution. Going from multichannel to omnichannel means shifting the focus from transactions to interactions.
The expectation is for customers to use their banking services using any device from mobile devices to tablets, laptops, pcs, and even in person and make the experience one cohesive whole where they only have to input data once for it to work across channels. Customers are demanding stellar interactions regardless of the medium and a resilient memory that understands their preferences.
Customer touchpoints are interactions that become a priority as their intents are captured, analyzed, and acted upon to bring highly personal and fully optimized conversations.
Evolving Customer Demands
Giving customers a multichannel experience isn’t enough anymore. High omnichannel banking standards are required to have a seat at the table. It is no longer a differentiator that comes with a competitive advantage.
Part of this is because the variety of devices that customers use to interact with their bank has exploded. Neatly defined channels don’t exist anymore. The ability to access accounts through them is taken for granted.
The way that channels need to be built and managed is changing too. The key feature isn’t that a bank is taking steps towards a digital-first approach. While that is important, it is the communication between channels that is becoming the most critical.
Businesses that ignore this trend are quickly investing in apps that don’t offer interconnectivity. These ill thought-out solutions add more silos and fragment the experiences of customers. Instead of solving problems, these approaches are creating more. Banks that have gone that route will have to start from scratch or severely rework these channels to make them useful in the near future.
Traditional banking strategies have focused on how transactions are executed and ignored the more extensive journey. Flawless transaction handling is still critical, but it isn’t enough.
Savvy institutions are borrowing insights gained from industries that value customer experience. They are using every time a customer touches a device, makes a search, or does a transaction to collect data on how the interaction went and use that data to create a more intimate understanding of the customer.
An Integrated Voice
It’s essential that your users are able to move between channels without losing data. This approach needs a central record database to get the same level of care across all versions and platforms. One of the biggest frustrations is when the customer has to repeat what they need across channels or reenter redundant information.
By paying attention to what customers have told them before and having access to that information, it lends to the feeling that the bank cares about the customer and adds to personalized care.
Data Driven
Companies are seeing that exceptional customer experiences come from when their expectations are met and exceeded. Moving beyond what is expected necessitates anticipating wants and likes from the customers and bringing those preferences to life without constant feedback.
Finding those key features to include in a customer experience demands that institutions adjust the type of data collected on their customers. Recording telephone interactions has always been an inefficient way of collecting data, making it unsuitable for mining valuable insights. Recorded data is contained in unstructured clumps that do little more than take up storage space.
Moving towards a new strategy means looking at engagements. These systems aren’t inherently more accurate, but they are designed to go above these limitations. Measuring engagements work even if the data is blurry around the edges, and skilled data analysts can mine them for valuable information and actionable insights.
Another shift in the move from multichannel to omnichannel is going away from Service-oriented architecture (SOA). Using SOA allowed different components to interact with each other because everything was standardized. Integration became easier and allowed components to be reused more often. Now, Big Data is the next movement in structure. This technology focuses on allowing many different kinds of data to be effectively managed and analyzed.
Bringing Omnichannel to Life
The task of bringing an omnichannel strategy from intention to reality has several steps needed to do it right. Banks need to address three key points:
- Logging customer intent
- Managing engagement systems
- Discovering and acting upon insights
Customers don’t inform institutions about their intent. Sometimes they aren’t consciously aware of it. Asking for input ruins the fluidity of the interaction and gives opinions that don’t amount to much. Banks that successfully discover their customers’ intent rely on analytics and data metrics to log what each customer does. Logging as much data as possible within the bounds of ethics and regulations allows banks to derive this knowledge faster and more accurately.
Web analytics, for example, look at a customer’s behavior on the company website. Mobile devices track location information to discover patterns in customer behavior related to geography. Talking interactions can use software to analyze emotion, and social networks use tools to determine how customers feel about different topics.
Cost-Effective Longevity
By leveraging cutting-edge technology, we’re able to provide our clients with long-term, cost-effective, sustainable communication. Moving into digital channels gives businesses unmatched scalability. Initial investments in channel evolution quickly pay for themselves with improved scalability and long-term cost savings.
Digital processes cut out bloated workflows and embrace automation, which brings costs down. We help our customers reap these benefits, but these changes do more than cut costs. Going digital is also a way to add a meaningful personal touch to the services people receive, which brings in more revenue long term.
Focusing on the customer experience allows us to provide our clients with actionable steps to leverage technology to reduce costs and increase revenues.
The customer experience starts from day one with attraction and onboarding. We find ways to effectively show the customer how the new app and dashboard works, making a new service less intimidating and easier to use. They use devices like an onscreen tour to explain critical functions.
Keeping customers in the dark about how services work has been easy for banks to do. Customers have become alienated from the financial institutions serving them.
With privacy becoming such a pressing consumer concern, informing people why specific permissions are necessary makes them more comfortable with what you are doing with their devices. Fostering trust early on in the customer relationship is key to building long-lasting customer loyalty.
Failing to meet these needs sees loyal customers that banked with an institution for decades moving onto other services. Failing to embrace technology means failing to prioritize customers, and they won’t stick around if they don’t feel valued.
The vast array of projects that we have worked on has given us the experience to surmount the challenges that any company faces. We’ve seen it all and we are confident when we say we can deliver.
A Stronger Bond
Using data analysis and customer profiling, we leverage channels to enhance your user’s experience without wasting valuable resources. Get a competitive advantage by staying relevant in the digital age.
Decide who your omnichannel strategy is going to target. Different generations of consumers have different expectations and different channels that should be emphasized. Failing to go digital when targeting younger generations won’t result in success. Neglecting traditional channels like branch and phone when dealing with older generations will drive those folks away.
Integrate your multi-channel communications for a sustainable, evolved brand image. We work to help our customers tailor the customer experience on demand. Today’s consumers won’t accept generic services. They expect companies to leverage technology to treat them like individuals. We give our clients the tools to do just that.
Banks can use the wealth of customer information available to pivot and adapt their services based on real feedback quickly.
Many of the support issues that customers face have been dealt with before. While they still prefer to deal with human customer service advisors, AI fills in gaps to reduce the strain on customer service and quickly resolve small repetitive issues.
AI powered chatbots are an increasingly popular tool to answer basic questions and FAQs and funnel them towards the right department. The bots provide a clean way to interact with companies quickly without waiting in line. Basic processes like flagging false transactions or comparing products are possible. Eliminating busywork shortens the time between experiencing a problem and finding the answer. Feeling like they are supported is an important measure of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Seamless Engagement
Customers don’t expect jittery segmented branding and communication, but one integrated voice across various mediums. We’ll assess your team’s interactions with your customers and how your communication techniques can be improved, leveraging your current strengths to create authentic brand interaction. Our creative channel strategies connect your mediums into one, strong integrated voice.
To perform well, financial institutions are developing detailed buyer personas. Our clients create these detailed dives into how their customers think and act based on their demographics. Considering the journey that each person takes with them and measuring what they respond to gives them a more in-depth look into what features and technologies to develop.
Shifting from Multichannel to Omnichannel
The previous method of taking a multichannel, bank-centric view isn’t discarded but expanded. These services are evolving to bring more of what customers want and like into the mix.
The multichannel approach remains an essential part of a strong service foundation. This approach focused on efficiently handling transactions, processing them more reliably and accurately.
With previous methodologies, understanding the customer was an afterthought. Omnichannel banking flips that paradigm on its head to move towards a client-centric view of design. Client interactions are becoming the priority instead of the final polish.
From Mobile to Social
From the web to mobile to social, we can bring your channels in line with today’s experience era.
From developing an iOS App for one of the world’s largest digital-only banks to consulting on a range of channel strategies, we’re well-positioned to provide strong channel strategies.
Our channel strategies evolve as the market does. We help our clients follow trends in the industry and get them on track to implement necessary changes. We step in by assisting them in evaluating the channels where they are weakest and giving them the tools to fill in those gaps.
Modern banking needs multiple channels to provide an immersive experience. They need to build systems that can handle high volume and volatility on the back end without missing anything on the front. Bringing channels together makes the bank’s brand more cohesive and helps build a sense of community that engages people.
An Evolving Market
During the ongoing pandemic, the needs of the times are for customers to have access to everything online that they would in person. Making this transition is becoming the most critical factor in keeping customers loyal.
Bringing high-quality, flexible services to their client base is becoming a powerful differentiator for our clients.
We see the human value in the services we help build-out for our clients and use data collected from customers as feedback to improve continually. We have helped our clients embrace more channels and develop an omnichannel approach without alienating their current user base.
We have worked alongside the world’s top financial institutions over the last 14 years.
The insights we have learned into how financial markets are evolving have been instrumental to our growth as a company, and it shows in the value we can provide our clients. An omnichannel approach is the next step in the evolution of banking, and we work to help our clients embrace that future.
Book a Channels Consultation
The right managed services provider can build omnichannel systems for you. We’re that provider, we will bring you closer to your customers and create a bond that spans generations.