With the invention of the Coronavirus vaccine, enterprises across industries have started to re-think the entry back to the ‘normal life.’ It is obvious that the pre-pandemic strategies would definitely not work, as the pandemic has given a different narrative to the whole customer expectations’ story. Banking leaders’ perception of customers entirely changed with the intervention of the pandemic and now they are concentrating on the most important aspect- enhancing customer experience. Here are some trends that may help to create amazing customer experience in the post pandemic world:

1. The COVID-19 effect

It is true that the pandemic came as quite a shock jostling our everyday life and businesses across the world have struggled to grasp the situation. Likewise, post the pandemic business world will likely experience similar chaos. Banks across the world are struggling to re-build their business and make up for all the financial loss. However, the positive side of the story is, the pandemic opened our eyes to a brand new digital world and changed the entire persona of banking by re-thinking the strategies. Banks were forced to go digital, as customers expected a digital medium similar to other industries.

As we finally see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel with the COVID-19 vaccines the digital revolution is predicted to only grow as customers are accustomed to everything digital and banks have to advance in the same direction to enhance their customer experience. Several other aspects caused due to the pandemic might diminish over time, but the technical aspects will always shine. Hence, CX digitisation has become the ‘new normal’ for CX leaders in the banking industry.

2. Conversational CX

When chatbots were introduced, customers were amused by the power of AI and ML as the visible instant results took the customer experience to a great level. But will this be enough for the current generation? No. This is because chatbots have become frequent in several industries, including the banking and financial services. While chatbots does the job decently, the time has come to think beyond. Most customers are aware of these chatbot services, and they cater to customer needs excellently. But they are mostly used to provide instant customer support, but why can’t it be beyond that?

Chatbots can be trained to interact with customers via push notifications, app messages, emails, etc., by understanding customer journey and communicating with them in a personalised way. Most CX leaders are adopting different strategies to ensure they are building a good rapport with their customers by developing a matured and real-time conversational tool.

From a simple greeting message to real-time insights, communicating at the right time will build the right customer relationship. Imagine a food delivery app like Swiggy or Zomato sending a notification “How about some yummy for the tummy?” Such notifications instantly intrigue customers and they automatically order food. It might not be this easy for banks, but the approach can help attract customers as these small steps leverage human emotions to trigger conversations which can eventually lead to building healthier relationships.

3. Customer experience- The Journey

Often customer experience is misunderstood as a support service, and this is where most banks fail to establish a strong customer relationship. Customer experience begins from the point you approach them and is a continuous process. At any stage, if the process gets interrupted or goes out of sync, customers might lose interest in your bank.

Hence, banks have to get insights from their past mistakes, understand their current position from a customer standpoint, and design a roadmap for customer journey accordingly. This takes a definitive skill set, strong foundation, and support system to maintain consistency. The only way to reach customers effectively is by taking this extra mile and catering to the customer requirements.

Recommended Read: From customer experience to customer retention- Aspire’s CX/OX suite

4. Customer is the crux of any enterprise

Long gone are the days when banks considered their assets or business as the focal point. In the current times, everything is about customer experience, and the future of banks depends on the ability to enrich customer experience.

Banking leaders have realised the actual reason for their failure in reaching customers. A simple formula to gain customers is to think like them and hence, banks are re-thinking their strategies surrounding customers. This trend is having drastic effects as customers are witnessing innovations at a rapid rate.

5. Building a seamless omnichannel experience

The perks of an effective omnichannel customer experience have been recited a million times, and most bankers are exploring ways to improve their banking platform in order to provide a seamless customer experience through their omnichannel software. Often, customers are using one medium to begin and another to end their process, be it any industry. They expect the same flexibility from banks, and a slight mismatch might result in losing a prospective customer.

However, it is not a cakewalk to build an efficient omnichannel customer experience as there are considerable security threats that come along with it. Hence, it is every bank’s responsibility to work on their security enhancements and encryption software which helps them to build a resilient omnichannel customer experience.

6. Personalized CX

The trend that attracts most millennials is the personalised products. Specifically, in the financial industry, millennials expect banks to be more than just banks. They expect it to act like a financial reminder, advisor, friend, etc., and help customers in taking the right financial steps.

Most banks are investing in banking apps embedded with PFM capabilities. With features like aiding in financial savings, investment plans and goals, etc., these apps offer hundreds of insights that help customers in their financial journey. When banks adopt such technical advancements, customers feel ‘human’ regarding banks and this enhances customer relationship.

7. Digital transformation

The villain of every bank’s digital transformation story is the legacy systems. Considering the customer expectations, if a bank has to grow, it has to re-route from the legacy way to the digital road. On the same note, CX leaders in banking industry are considering several ways and innovations to overcome the legacy limitations and provide an efficient digital customer experience.

This is where newbie banks like challenger banks have a chance to become an ultimate banking platform, as they do not have to worry about legacy systems. Considering the current hybrid generation who prefer to still visit a bank physically, CX leaders in the established banks are working on a new channel which provides an option for customers to go digital if interested.

Overall, the entire Banking and financial services industry is working towards a comprehensive CX transformation to ensure seamless customer experience.

8. Customer loyalty- the key for customer retention

We have witnessed so many banks competing neck-to-neck with their diverse offerings. Many bankers believe that the secret to win the banking game is to offer unique and interesting services to their customers.

However, to be the best from the rest, banks have to win customer loyalty. Banks that ensure their customer’s happiness and data security will emerge as the real winner. Hence, CX leaders in the banking industry have to work on gaining customer trust, which happens with personalised positive communication, rapid issue resolution, right product recommendations, etc.

Gaining customer loyalty is a journey and banks have to remain consistent because a slight breach might result in complete loss of customer’s trust.

9. Analytics- the superpower

For better customer understanding, most banks rely on customer feedback and take several kinds of annual surveys to understand their customer pain points, requirements, etc.

However, to get a holistic picture of customer needs, most stakeholders of these banks feel that survey-based research doesn’t entirely serve the purpose. According to McKinsey, only 15% of the CX leaders were satisfied with their survey-based research. Most leaders feel the need for another source that can help them understand their customers.

Hence, Analytics has become one of the most recommended and preferred source of customer understanding. Analytics extracts data from different points or sources accurately and legally to help define individual customer needs. Most banks are already exploring different ways to enhance their analytics tool for better customer relationship.

A Takeaway

Customer experience has taken a significant importance in the world of banking and CX leaders are exploring different ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas to achieve excellence in this area. While most feel that only CX design plays a vital role in building customer relationship, but the reality goes beyond. Along with customer’s journey, banks also carry their journey and this has to be a consistent and continuous process. Hence, it is imperative to choose a CX partner that can aid you in building an end-to-end banking empire that has rich and resilient customer experience.

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