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Upgrading Customer Experience Is Still Essential For Banking Growth

Planned upgrades to customer experience have been a fundamental part of most banking innovation strategies for some time now. But with the global economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, every element of planned investment is being called into question. 

Should banks still be looking to improve their digital customer experience during tougher times? This is not only still an essential part of any innovation roadmap, but also there are some of the new imperatives resulting from the current crisis that are adding new and pressing requirements.

 

The Digital Customer Experience Matters

When looking for evidence that the digital customer experience is essential as part of any bank’s growth engine, both now and into the future, you only need to look to the leaders in this space. Digital-only retail banks that are growing are at the forefront of driving innovation in digital customer experience. The innovations they have implemented have seen retail banks attract new customers and deepen their relationships with their existing customer base.

Their core areas of focus have been redesigning the journeys that matter most, with top priority going to removing friction from the customer journey. Alongside this banks have made smarter use of data to create personalised and real time offers among the tactics used to drive sales. Retail banks are also pursuing benefits such as increased customer loyalty through an easier user experience and a reduction in the cost associated with serving each customer through innovation in the digital customer experience.

 

New Drivers For Customer Experience Innovation In Banking

Alongside the obvious benefits that banks identified pre-coronavirus, innovation in the digital customer experience also holds the key to responding to some of the key trends that have emerged from the COVID-19 crisis.

  1. As feelings of insecurity ripple across markets in the wake of the pandemic threat, customers are increasingly demanding greater clarity and transparency from their banks. An improved digital customer experience can go a long way to meeting this need and reducing pressure on already overstretched manned services.
  2. The current situation has pushed a new cohort of customers to adopt the digital tools offered by their banks and with these new users comes a requirement for support built in to the customer experience for the successful adoption of those digital services. 
  3. As the opportunity for face to face interaction between a bank and its customers is reduced, there’s an increased need for a simple way for customers to discover new products themselves in the digital space and for their journey through the banking applications to be simplified.

How To Ride The Customer Experience Wave

Without doubt, these increased pressures to innovate the digital customer experience should and indeed will sharpen banks’ focus in this area. Many will be looking for the best way to accelerate their progress in customer experience given the other operational challenges they continue to face.

The key to moving both quickly and easily is to tap into the tech powerhouses that already exist and piggyback on the innovations that have already been developed by other more agile and digitally focused organisations.

There are new fintech platforms that enable speedy proposition development and launch, enabling more traditional financial institutions to bring their desired outcomes to market quickly and easily, delivering seamless customer journeys that will serve as a competitive differentiator both now and into the future. 

Want to learn more about how a platform-based model may help? Continue to this blog.

Key Ideas

  • Digital-only retail banks are at the forefront of driving innovation in digital customer experience
  • Digital customer experiences not only attract new customers but also deepen relationships with existing customers
  • Banks should tap into tech powerhouses that already exist to access innovative ecosystems