Banks: improve the customer experience by increased use of digital technology?

Mobile application, website, visual IVR, or even Chatbot; there are plenty of digital tools available to support banking organisations delivering customer relationship management. However, how can they derive business benefit from these new tools without compromising their customer base?

A study conducted by Eptica on the subject of customer experience in 2017 found worryingly that 38% of questions from banking customers were not dealt with via a digital channel. An even more alarming statistic is that this is more than 10 points above the rate reported across all other sectors combined (28%) and poses the following question: Are banks really leveraging the potential offered by digital transformation to improve the customer experience?

No bank operates across the four principal digital conversation channels

Social networks, email, messaging and the telephone are, according to a study published by Dimel, the four preferred channels between a business and its customer base. They offer a range of contact points, which, depending on the strategy in use, may be viewed as an opportunity to reach out to a large target audience or alternatively, as a failing if some of these channels are not exploited.

These findings are not a cause for optimism in the banking sector. Whereas 50% of banks only offer a single digital conversation channel, just 10% reported offering three digital channels, this figure falling to 0% when all four are taken into account.

Promote digital content via an omnichannel strategy

"The conclusion is that banks are not equipping themselves technologically today to offer the best digital customer experience" commented Olivier Njamfa, CEO of Eptica (the software company that carried out this study).

But then, what is the best strategy to adopt to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by digital tools to affect the customer experience?

According to a study conducted by Qualiweb, which appeared in February 2017, 79% of French consumers use multiple digital channels to contact their suppliers' Helpline. Email is, unsurprisingly, the most popular channel used (70%), followed by online messaging and social networks.

The objective is therefore to be wherever the customer expects you to be and combine contact points by targeted age groups. A combination of social networks and messaging seems, therefore, the most attractive to 18 to 25-year-olds, whereas a service using primarily the telephone and email appeals to older customers.

Highlighting the importance of presenting digital tools as a factor in delivering customer satisfaction

The most important thing is to show your customers that you understand them and are adapting to their needs. From this perspective, digital tools should be presented as a way of making life easier for customers and, most importantly, not a way for businesses to save money. To achieve this, don't be frightened to run a traditional contact channel (such as the telephone) alongside a digital channel (a Chat service for example) to answer a particular query (information on a request for credit for example). Then make sure that the benefits of the digital solution (speed of response, no waiting time etc.) are highlighted so that in future, the customer themselves selects the digital option.

So, are you convinced of the importance of an omnichannel approach to the customer experience? To obtain more information, why not download the Dial Once white paper on the subject of reducing the flow of inbound contacts.