Innovate or Fail: How to Attract and Retain New Banking Customers
Blog: Kofax - Smart Process automation
Survival in today’s world of digital finance means banks must constantly strive to attract and retain their customers. An effective onboarding strategy can help achieve this goal.
Modern consumers count on real-time customer service.
Today’s consumers expect an instant sign up and fast service from their financial institutions. Gone are the days when they were willing to travel to a branch to fill out countless forms, followed by weeks of waiting for approval.
Some fail to embrace advanced technologies, such as flexible, scalable IT platforms to onboard clients, or automated systems that make the process fast, consistent and accurate. In many cases, if customers encounter problems when opening a new account online, they simply give up, bail out, and take their business elsewhere.
Switching banks are becoming an increasingly widespread trend. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, between 10 to 20 percent of customers switch banks every year. To prevent this from happening, consider following these four steps to attract and keep customers.
- Make the first 90 days count.
Faced with the new customer status quo of wanting instant service and having wider choices, the first 90 days of customer engagement are critical. During this crucial timeframe, a bank not only attracts new customers but also begins building loyal, long-term relationships with them.
Speed and simplicity are essential to the customer onboarding process. In the rapidly evolving world of mobile online banking, Simple.com is one of the most famous examples of easy, online onboarding, and its competitors continue to grow in number. These competitors include Chime – a startup that has reduced its onboarding process to three simple steps: 1) sign up for your credit card online, 2) set up direct deposit with your company’s HR department and 3) activate your card.
- Design a follow-up plan.
To win customers in that First Mile of engagement, banks need software that makes customer sign-up fast and easy. Follow-up plans that include welcome emails, and incorporate financial savings (such as special one-time offers and online competitions),
are effective ways to build loyalty and brand awareness. It’s also important to collect customer insights whenever possible (and always with their permission), to deliver increasingly targeted, contextual content to customers as the bank/customer relationship grows.
- Go mobile.
Today’s customers expect to engage with organizations whenever they want, from whatever device they choose. Innovative solutions such as the Kofax Mobile Capture Platform allow customers to use their smartphones to capture their identification, scan their documents, and send their scanned documents to the bank.
- Switch to digital, automated processes.
Discarding paper-based processes in favor of digital results delivers high customer satisfaction, and helps banks achieve time savings of up to 80 percent. Authentication, workflow, exception handling, compliance, product selection, and e-signatures are additional innovations that help fully orchestrate the account opening process.
It’s all about your customers.
There’s never a second chance to make a good first impression. That’s why a positive customer experience should be a priority for every financial institution that strives to attract and keep its customers. Real-time customer service, a carefully designed follow-up plan, and mobile, digital and automated processes, are all essential ingredients of an effective onboarding strategy.
Source: 2015 Consumer Banking Insights Study
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