In an age when tech giants have made online and mobile processes fast, easy, and enjoyably easy, your accountholders want (and expect) the same simplicity and optionality from your financial institution as they do from Netflix and Hulu. More than 50% of consumers surveyed in a global study stated that they want an omnichannel banking experience – the ability to seamlessly switch between physical and digital channels; and 61% of “digitally-centric” consumers are more likely to stay with their primary bank or credit union as opposed to 55% of “branch-centric” consumers.
To improve member experience and customer experience (CX), you'll need to think differently. Your accountholders expect you to be proactive in anticipating their current and future needs, personalize experiences, and offer touchpoints through various delivery channels. Re-envision the interactions with your accountholders and offer experiences that provide the highest quality of service, technology, and delivery.
To help you reimagine what a great customer experience in banking looks like, we’ve put together six tips you can use to get started.
While speed and convenience are crucial in our current digital-first era, it’s also true that the viability of community banks and credit unions hinge upon the ability to deliver personal service meaningfully through digital channels. Fully authenticated, real-time messaging capabilities (e.g. Banno ConversationsSM) can help you securely engage with accountholders to bring live, local personal service at their moments of need. Securely engaging with accountholders through digital banking means you’re not only providing superior self-service digital banking – you’re also differentiating on personal service at the speed of need.
What’s next? Bring the Main Street banking business model into the digital-first era with digital banking solutions that empower you and your employees to securely and personally engage with accountholders when they need you the most.
While opening a new checking account will never be as simple as creating your Netflix or Hulu account, it’s up to banks and credit unions to make it feel like it is. After all, the average abandonment rate for digital deposit account applications is more than 50% – with prospects abandoning account opening if they find the onboarding process to be too long or if it requires more information than they’re prepared to give. To lower abandonment rates, banks and credit unions should focus on intuitive, responsive designs for mobile and desktop users to optimize the account opening process by removing excessive questions from applications and pre-fill form fields wherever possible.
What’s next? Invest in a frictionless digital account opening tool that can help you improve the customer experience by offering easy, user-friendly account opening experiences that rival today’s biggest brands.
Payments are the most common “money moments” for your accountholders. Moving money is how people pay bills, buy groceries, and how businesses transact and grow. And with the advent of Venmo and Zelle®, streamlining the way accountholders access the funds they need the moment they need it has evolved from a competitive distinction into a competitive necessity. In fact, only 5% of financial professionals interviewed in a 2021 Levvel Consulting study do not anticipate offering real-time payments. When developing a faster payments strategy, you'll want to start by finding a payments partner that can provide seamless connections to existing real-time payments networks with plans to support all future networks that emerge.
What’s next? Take your member experience to the next level by offering the modern payment solutions that your accountholders have come to rely on so they can send money immediately and seamlessly in their exact moments of need.
New ways have emerged in this digital-first era for your organization to increase non-interest fee income. When considering ways to modernize your deposit strategies and technologies, start with how you can better serve small businesses through digital contexts – like electronic invoicing. With a tool like electronic invoicing (a new standard feature available through an Autobooks open integration with Jack HenrySM), users can send invoices directly to their customers and quickly accept online payments. This feature immediately engages accountholders and ultimately drives more deposits.
Next steps? Look for digital solutions that not only improve your customer experience strategy, but also drive non-interest fee income by encouraging more deposits – to you and to your small business accounts.
Responding to borrower inquiries quickly and at the time and place of the borrower’s choosing – all with minimal friction – is no longer an option. It’s essential. To simplify your lending operations, eliminate the time-consuming manual processes that often stand in the way of a positive lending experience and instead, handle all aspects of loan origination (from application to decisioning to portfolio management) from one place using a single lending platform.
Next steps? Simplify your lending operations and quickly respond to inquiries by using a centralized loan processing platform.
All too often, banks and credit unions allow the competition to dictate pricing without an understanding of the entire relationship profitability value when competing for new loans, which can lead to a gradual weakening of net interest margin. Typically, 20% of the client base generates the most profit. To identify, protect, and grow those relationships, and improve member experience, you can calculate a risk-adjusted income statement for each relationship loan, deposit, and service account – thereby arming your decision-makers and frontline personnel with the data they need to effectively manage relationships and strategically price new business.
What’s next? Do your homework to get a clear understanding of your accountholders and their profitability, then segment based on profit and make meaningful connections to those high-value clients.
Customer experience is vital for all companies in today's times, but the customer experience in banking has become even more crucial as your accountholders become more acquainted with digital banking; personalized anytime, anywhere support; and modern conveniences like end-to-end lending and digital account opening. To improve Customer experience, you need to improve the interactions your accountholders have with your employees, your brand, your solutions, and your services. When you reimagine the customer and member experience and offer banking tools that are useful, relevant, seamless, and appropriately simple, your accountholders will have no need to look elsewhere for services.
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