How to move to banking that is more meaningful?

There is a need to continue evolving how people can interact with their banks, and customers are expecting this change to be happening right now. Customer satisfaction is relative. To be able to capture the hearts, minds, and wallets of customers, banks will need to accelerate their digital transformation and reconfigure each channel to serve every need customers have. Only this level of transformation is likely to strengthen banks’ emotional ties with consumers and earn them a top spot in the list of consumers’ favourite brands.

How to move banking services to be more meaningful will depend on the different banking systems, experiences and geographic variation. This could include: 

1.     More ‘real in digital’ and ‘digital in real’: Merging the physical with the virtual/digital is key to superior customer experience. An example being, consumers hanging out at or working from café-resembling bank branches, interacting with their bank’s mobile apps as integrally and joyfully as they do with social media apps, or reporting lost/stolen cards using the bank’s app instead of dialling the call centre.

2.     Extended service hours: This could be with virtual assistants, digital screen self-service and video appointments making a point of the convenience. Many traditional banking customers do not make use of these features, as they do not understand the full benefits.  

3.     Enhanced security features: Customers are concerned with data security, however want a seamless and easy user authentication experience with real time problem resolution.  

4.     Mobile as an experiential channel: Avid users of banks’ digital channels expect more from their primary banks, which is seen in the gap in emotional connection between their favourite brands and primary bank. With this segment, banks should use mobile as a differentiator to build sticky experiences. 

5.     Breaking the channel silos: Branch, ATMs, online, mobile, and call centers all need to be connected, along with third-party digital assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Consumers’ fascination for omnichannel experiences is real. 70% of consumers in our recent study consider a consistent experience across channels to be extremely important or very important in selecting their primary bank.