The expectations of customers have undergone major changes over the past several years, leading to the creation of an ever-evolving market. Keeping up with this constant evolution has presented a challenge for financial institutions looking to strengthen their bonds with customers.
In order to create long-lasting bonds and relationships with consumers, financial institutions need to embrace omnichannel banking solutions. An omnichannel strategy will allow banking professionals to stay in close contact with their customers, no matter which avenue of communication is being used.
Your customers are arguably the most important part of your business – and creating bonds with them is essential for your continued success. In this article, we will be discussing how to adopt more customer-focused strategies by embracing omnichannel banking.
The Importance of a Customer-Centric Approach
The year 2020 saw a separation of customers and businesses. Whereas once a customer could speak directly one-on-one with a financial professional, required state- and nation-wide lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic led to financial institutions having to find new ways to provide their services.
The reality of customer-centric business strategies is that they have always had an important role to play. Only in recent years, however, have banks and other financial businesses begun to realize the true importance of making themselves and their services more widely available to their consumers.
Now, as the pandemic has finally begun to wind-down, customer expectations have shifted in a major way. This has caused financial institutions at all levels to re-evaluate their business approaches in order to identify the ways in which they can meet these new expectations.
By adopting a customer-centric approach, banks can dissect and interpret the individual needs of each client in order to provide a more personalized and satisfying service.
Utilizing Omnichannel Strategies for Better Communication
An omnichannel strategy is defined as a style of communication that allows for all activities and services to be carried out across all channels.
Put simply, this means that a client can carry out each individual financial activity, regardless of whether the client is actually present at the physical location or visiting the business’ virtual platform. The primary objective of any strong omnichannel strategy will be to make every interaction a customer has as seamless as possible, no matter the channel they are arriving from.
In order to achieve such an omnichannel strategy, financial institutions must embrace the processes of digital transformation. This will help to open up more lines of communication and enable virtually-based services, thus allowing for omnichannel development.
Developing Omnichannel Systems
There are several key factors to keep in mind when developing an omnichannel system or solution. Because omnichannel banking goes hand-in-hand with customer-centric service, financial institutions must take a close look at their own customers to determine their specific needs and how they respond to different approaches.
There are four main components to the development of an omnichannel system:
· Creating Customer Personas: Customer personas are often used in marketing to identify the different behaviors of a customer as the make their way through the “buyer’s journey” – aka how they behave from start to finish in any given activity or scenario. Creating these kinds of customer personas helps financial institutions to better understand how exactly their customers are using different channels of communication to carry out various tasks.
· Building Onboarding Tools: When building a virtual platform or application, there needs to be a certain simplicity in the onboarding process. Not every customer is going to be highly familiar with how digital platforms typically work, making it necessary to build intuitive interfaces that guide users in how to properly carry out actions and navigate the site.
· Maintaining User Records: In order to have a true omnichannel banking system, financial institutions must ensure that customer data and records are available across all channels. This way, less time is wasted on the customer having to re-explain their issue or needs to each representative or interface they come into contact with.
· Leveraging Artificial Intelligence: A major challenge with virtual, digitally-based financial services is that interfaces can easily feel inhuman and difficult to interact with. By leveraging AI and machine learning, financial institutions can build in features such as chatbots and predictive technology that help to create more human-like and helpful interactions for customers.
Final Thoughts: Embracing the Shift Towards Omnichannel Banking
Like it or not, the financial industry is taking a major turn towards digitization. As this transformation continues to become more widespread, it is more important than ever for financial institutions to solidify and strengthen their bonds with their customers.
Omnichannel banking offers a seamless solution for optimizing a financial institution’s customer service across all channels. By embracing omnichannel development, banking professionals can meet their customers’ expectations with much greater flexibility and ease.
Written by Cesar Cotait, CEO of Latin America at CPQi, the leading provider of digital transformation for financial markets across the Americas.
