“”
Category

Digital Communications

Providing a Superior Digital Experience with Cross-Departmental Collaboration

By | Blog, Digital Communications, Resources

One of the byproducts of the burgeoning digital age is a sharp rise in consumer expectations for efficient and convenient experiences. Both online and in-person, consumers have grown to expect streamlined shopping experiences, flexible appointment options, and seamless cross-channel interactions. 

According to Salesforce, 62% of customers say experiences with one industry influence their expectations of others, and 88% expect companies to accelerate their digital initiatives. With the rapid evolution of digital services and an increasingly internet-savvy public, the average consumer is no longer tolerant of antiquated digital experiences that are full of friction and hurdles.

Today’s Digital Challenges

However, it’s obviously not always easy to provide this kind of broad and seamless service—especially when the financial services industry is facing major staffing shortages. Banks and credit unions are encouraged to invest in their digital experience, and yet in-branch service remains a prominent factor in the marketplace. Organizations push to engage through multiple channels, and this leaves some of them spread too thin to provide a satisfying consumer experience.

This is what makes a broad, omnichannel experience so vital in today’s market. By optimizing the customer journey and offering consumers various paths to the services they seek, you can not only secure more revenue, but can drive brand loyalty and customer satisfaction as well.

Collaborating to Create a Better Experience

A vital ingredient in this process is cross-departmental collaboration. This is the assurance that all the individual departments in an organization are working in sync to create a cohesive consumer experience. 

Take, for example, a community bank. With the staff of their branches, contact center, lending team, collections department, and investment department all accessible online, it follows that customers will expect to be able to move freely from one department to the next. But because these various departments are managed by different groups of people and run from different locations, the customers are sometimes faced with obstacles.

If a customer begins with a simple customer service request, and then later decides they’re curious about the bank’s auto loan offerings, their customer service agent might only be able to take them so far before transferring them to a lending officer. But when that switch happens, how efficient is it? If the customer is told to visit a branch, or to submit an application on the website, they may not follow through with their inquiry. But if the customer is simply transferred via collaborative video to meet with a lending expert, it could not only provide a more streamlined customer experience, but could also help the bank close more loans. 

Experience is Everything

It’s for reasons like these that providing a satisfying digital experience has become so important. As author and customer experience expert Dan Gingiss put it, “Most companies must realize that they are no longer competing against the guy down the street or the brand that sells similar products. Instead, they’re competing with every other experience a customer has.”

With digital experiences playing an increasingly crucial role in consumer behavior, now is an ideal time to find the right Digital Communications Platform. Implementing the right digital solutions gives you the ability to build a more effective and personalized customer experience, enabling your financial institution to flourish in the digital age. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of our unique Digital Communications Platform, schedule some time to speak with one of our experts here!

A woman and a man on a computer

How Financial Institutions Can Stay Relevant Despite the Threat of Embedded Banking

By | Blog, Digital Communications, Video Banking

Embedded finance and Banking as a Service (BaaS) are rapidly reshaping the financial services industry—and have the potential to reshape other industries as well. Banks and credit unions face the increasing threat of financial services being offered by non-banking companies. The Financial Brand writes that “telcos, big techs and software companies, car manufacturers, insurance providers, and logistics firms” are all preparing to launch financial services to serve both businesses and consumers.

This changing landscape threatens banks and credit unions because it holds the potential to eat away at their market share. When non-financial companies are offering services like digital wallets, payments, lending, and bank accounts, legacy financial institutions (FIs) are put at risk of losing crucial business. But what can banks and credit unions do to stop it? How can they maintain their business despite the trend? In this blog, we’ll discuss the growing embedded finance and BaaS movements, and what FIs can do to maintain their market share.

The Developing Trend

Similar to movements like open banking, embedded finance—or embedded banking—is a relatively recent development. With the growth of e-commerce in recent years, people are adapting to new, digitized buying practices. In some cases, financial products, like financing, payments, digital wallets, and more are being built into other products and services and sold to businesses and consumers by non-financial companies.

Researchers looking into embedded finance consistently report that it’s expected to grow substantially in coming years. According to Dealroom.co, the total embedded finance market value is projected to hit $7.2 trillion by 2030. “Embedded finance and BaaS startups have already attracted huge funding in the last year,” the article says.

Companies venturing into embedded finance often have the goal of creating a more comprehensive customer experience. In their own research on the topic, McKinsey wrote that “Companies’ embrace of embedded finance…aims to retain customers and increase their so-called lifetime value.” By becoming a bigger part of their customers’ lives, these brands aim to increase the value of the products and services they provide. “For customers, the appeal is ease of use: a small business can get a bank account from its accounting software, or a consumer can pay via the retailer,” McKinsey wrote. 

How FI’s Fight Back

As The Financial Brand points out, most banks and credit unions are not prepared to compete in this new world of embedded finance. To survive, many financial institutions are partnering with fintechs to remain competitive. But banks and credit unions can still stay in the fight by making sure they have the ability to complete revenue-generating services outside the branch. 

The essential aspect of embedded banking that gives it an edge over legacy financial institutions is that it offers simplicity and comes built in to existing products and services. If financial institutions worked to make the delivery of their products more convenient, they might face less competition from embedded banking. Fewer people might be interested in applying for a loan with a non-financial company if they could just as conveniently apply for that loan at the financial institution they’ve entrusted with their money for the last ten years.

With the right technology, processes like opening and funding accounts, applying for loans, and other revenue-generating services can be easily completed digitally. It’s for reasons like these that so many POPi/o engagements end in document signing events. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can implement a Digital Communications Platform capable of delivering all your most important services outside the branch, Let’s Talk!

Biracial female hold cell at ear look at pc screen

Hitting a Moving Target: How to Meet Consumers’ Rising Digital Expectations

By | Blog, Digital Communications, Video Banking

The financial institutions that succeed are often defined by a never-ending mission to enhance their Customer Experience (CX). The people leading these organizations know that the rapidly evolving digital landscape is constantly raising the bar for consumer expectations. And with new metrics for measuring success and an increasing willingness for consumers to share information, there is an almost endless opportunity for CX improvement, including personalized experiences, targeted offers, visual engagement, conversational AI, and a host of other digital communications tools.

In the financial services industry, more than 70% of companies are undergoing a CX transformation, with 39.7% of institutions having a project completed or in-progress, and 30.9% planning a project by the end of 2022.

In a study by Metrigy, business metrics were evaluated before and after CX transformations. They based the transformations on four major categories: conversational AI, visual engagement, workforce engagement management, and self-service knowledge management. By tracking the impact these efforts had on customer ratings, revenue, operating expenses, and agent productivity, Metrigy determined that the CX solutions which resulted in the highest average improvement was visual engagement. This category includes video, cobrowsing, screen sharing, and other interactive tools.

According to The Financial Brand, “Consumers have grown accustomed to interacting with video and other visual means in their personal and professional lives.” They went on to say that banks and credit unions “are catching on and increasingly extending video to their customers,” adding that the most efficient way to do this is by integrating their call center and Digital Communications Platform. This allows representatives on web chat to send video links to prospective customers, providing a seamless transition to a more comprehensive level of care.

When CX leaders were asked what benefits their video implementation provided, they offered six key points:

  • Video makes interactions more efficient to solve issues faster (50%)
  • Video improves customer relationships with more personal interactions (49.2%)
  • The pandemic made everyone used to using video (45.9%)
  • Customers were asking for it (40%)
  • Interactions required agents or customers to see something (36%)
  • Agents wanted to use it (36%)

Video is also exceedingly cost effective when comparing its capabilities to traditional alternatives. By leveraging services through these convenient channels, financial institutions can operate outside their service area without the added expense of expanding their physical branch network.

And because the financial services industry has a high average number of agents working from home (54.7%) compared to the average (47.2%), implementation of Digital Communications Platforms that facilitate remote work have become routine across the industry. Along the way, it’s important to use data to make sure the tools being implemented are having the desired effect. Using analytics and surveys to better dial-in the customer experience, successful financial institutions will evolve to meet the changing needs of consumers.

It can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be. We recommend starting simple, implementing the most vital digital solution for the needs your institution has and growing engagement from there. To learn more about how you can get started with your own Digital Communications Platform, click here

Digitization Around the World: How Banks and Credit Unions can Plan for the Future

By | Blog, Digital Communications

If you find yourself wondering what the future looks like for the financial services industry, you’re not alone. Businesses in almost every sector have undergone fundamental changes in response to the turbulence of the last few years. The majority of these changes consisted of using digitization or data to compensate for the disturbances brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But not every effort at digitization results in the business or organization merely compensating for the detriments resulting from COVID. Some have achieved new levels of engagement, and have also seen secondary benefits such as better operational efficiencies, increased security, and more brand awareness.

To see where digitization may be going in the States, we’ll take a look at what’s going on around the world. 

How Public Services are Changing

In the government and public services sector—both in America and abroad—many services are moving online, and citizens interacting with them are often incentivized to use new digital channels. This often results in increased adoption, which provides mutual benefits, as the digitized services not only make things more manageable and organized for the government entity, but make the citizen’s life more convenient as well.

In Albania, for example, the government has worked with the World Bank to introduce more efficient electronic services, which significantly increased satisfaction among citizens and saved them time in the process. In their economic update titled, “Data Digitization, and Governance”, the World Bank relayed, “The time needed to register a vehicle fell from 5.3 days in 2016 to 30 minutes in 2020, and the process to request a health card, which took 5 days in 2016, could be completed in just a few minutes.” 

These new efficiencies have made life easier for Albanians. To the north, similar government improvements have created new levels of efficiency in Estonia. Their new X-Road system, a connected information infrastructure used for population, medical, and business registrations, allows users to register a new business in just three hours.

What makes these results from Albania and Estonia so compelling for financial institutions is the fact that vehicle registration, requesting health cards, and registering a business are all very similar to the services offered by many financial institutions, such as applying for auto loans, requesting replacement debit cards, and opening new accounts. And as digitized solutions like these become more pervasive throughout the world, digital services will eventually become an expected delivery method for services in many industries.  

Mass Digitization in the Private Sector

Along with government and public services, there are untold numbers of businesses in the private sector that are undergoing a change that involves digitization. It is no longer uncommon for a restaurant to only provide menu access via a QR code, or to only allow orders to be made online. 

Many doctor’s offices and medical institutions have integrated digital solutions into their operations as well. If you visit an office like this unprepared, the administrative attendant will likely hand you an iPad and ask you to complete the intake process online. 

Businesses prefer these new digitized methods because they’re more sustainable, easier to keep organized, and more efficient than traditional in-person meetings that involve filling out paperwork.

Of course, nothing indicates that the world is moving in a “digital only” direction that will do away with in-person meetings entirely. The point of digitization is not to remove the person from the equation, it is more commonly an effort to make things more efficient.

What the Future Looks Like

As we all know, tele-health and virtual learning are not on the verge of replacing in-person school or medical practices. But even with COVID restrictions lifted, this technology will continue to play a key role in markets around the world. The market size of digital transformation solutions is expected to more than double in the coming years, at a CAGR of around 17%. 

This means there will always be some level of virtual learning or tele-health in practice, whether it be after-school tutoring, extracurricular activities, or solutions like Better Help, which provide affordable online counseling.

Although foot traffic in branches continues to decline, nobody is suggesting that banks and credit unions shut down all their branches and rely solely on apps and solutions from the fin-tech industry. In-person banking isn’t going away, it’s just getting better with the help of digital services. 

While things like collaborative video conferencing, document exchange, E-sign, and cobrowse might be seen as added features that aren’t particularly necessary for the success of a financial institution, the question that banks and credit unions will need to ask themselves is this: When people are engaging with their school, their employer, their medical provider, and their government through digital channels, how will they want to engage with their financial institution?  

To learn more about how POPi/o can help you deliver your most important, revenue-generating services through convenient digital channels, click here.

What is a Virtual Financial Assistant? And How Could it Benefit Your Financial Institution?

By | Blog, Digital Communications

Since beginning our partnership with Abe.ai, creator of the Virtual Financial Assistant (VFA), we’ve been touching on this unique solution in our communications. But we’ve never really taken the opportunity to give a comprehensive look at what exactly a VFA does, and how financial institutions could wield it to their advantage—especially when used in conjunction with POPi/o’s Digital Communications solutions.

Who is Abe.ai?

Founded in 2016 and later acquired by Envestnet | Yodlee, Abe.ai is an artificial intelligence company that’s focused on building virtual assistant products and infrastructure for the financial services industry. Banks and credit unions of all sizes use Abe.ai’s software to create AI-powered, human-like experiences to scale customer support teams and enhance the customer experience.

What a VFA Could do for You

By interacting with consumers in the channels they prefer—such as website, online banking or mobile app—Abe.ai’s VFA plays the essential role of easing the load on customer service teams. Powered by machine learning and natural language processing, the VFA can interact in a natural and conversational way, resolving many common customer inquiries, freeing up call centers to use POPi/o’s Digital Communications solutions on more in-depth customer needs. With the ability to recognize thousands of utterances related to the most commonly asked questions at financial institutions, a VFA delivers a considerable amount of value to the customer experience. With a friendly, personable tone and rapid responses, it can field issues as they arise. 

Some examples of inquiries that the VFA can assist with are:

“I can’t remember my password.”

“What are my branch hours?”

“What’s my routing number?”

“Where’s the nearest ATM?”

“Debit card shipping time?”

“When will my deposit clear?”

“I’m locked out of my account.”

Digital Tools With a Personal Touch

Allowing a VFA to interact with customers on behalf of your institution takes a certain level of trust. It’s important that the software meets customer needs and effectively responds to questions. But it’s equally important that your customers are willing to engage with the VFA in the first place. Making the technology approachable to the common user may seem like a tall order, but the VFA comes pre-trained right off the shelf, making it fast and easy to implement. To make the technology more engaging, financial institutions can do things like give the VFA its own name and profile image. This helps assure that the VFA comes off as friendly and approachable, and also creates an opportunity to brand it as your own. By designing a user experience that feels natural to customers, you build rapport and brand loyalty.  

Abe.ai exampleLooking to the Future

Because conversational AI is a technology that continues to evolve over time, a VFA is a solution that constantly improves, providing greater value as machine learning continues to enhance its responses. And when matched with POPi/o’s Digital Communications solution, you can leverage the most convenient and comprehensive digital tools in the financial services industry. Commonly asked “nuisance questions” can be resolved without the interruption of your customer-facing staff, and more involved customer inquiries and transactions can be resolved using POPi/o’s extensive digital tools, like collaborative video, cobrowse, and more. With a Digital Communications solution, you can provide digital services that are not only fast and convenient, but friendly and personalized as well.

Are you interested in learning more about easing the load on your call centers, preventing abandonment, and meeting customer needs as they arise? Let’s talk.

Happy older woman relaxing on the sofa with tablet

How Financial Institutions are Thriving with Personalized Digital Services

By | Blog, Digital Communications

In the last few years, our way of life and doing business has gone through tremendous changes. Businesses across the globe are undergoing “digital transformations”, altering their practices or business models to cater to the rising demand for digital services.

In 2021, the global digital transformation market size was valued at $521 billion, and is anticipating a compound annual growth rate of 19% between now and 2026. But what does this all mean? In short, the increasing use of mobile devices, smartphones, tablets and other forms of technology has brought a growing demand for advanced digital features. 

Consumers are more comfortable navigating apps and web portals while dealing with businesses, and with this rise in digital fluency, consumer expectations have risen as well. 

But businesses aren’t undergoing digital transformations purely to meet the demands of customers. Some have also invested in digital services because of the monetary value they provide.

Digital implementations help businesses expand their service footprint and extend their hours of operation. A transformation allows a business to leverage services through efficient online tools, negating the inconvenience of in-person meetings.

With these new practices, businesses are opening new streams of revenue while also driving brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Studies have shown that 80% of businesses that undergo digital transformation report an increase in profits, while 85% report an increased market share. Enhanced data collection and more efficient resource management are also common benefits of digital transformation.

Why Personalization is Key

For businesses that sell generic, out-of-the-box products, personalization may not have to play a key role in their digital strategy. But financial institutions (FIs) have a more nuanced relationship with their customers. Because everyone’s financial situation is unique, a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t always effective in the financial services industry. As Colleen Dabbs put it on The Financial Brand, “Much more than just good targeting for offers, organizations need to engage contextually, in real time, helping customers reach their financial goals.”

But what does that kind of all-encompassing, hands-on approach look like? Translating all the services of a fully-operational branch into a functional and easy-to-use app is not an easy task. 

The answer, says Jim Marous, CEO of the Digital Banking Report, is that FIs need to blend the speed and convenience of their digital tools with the friendly and personalized services of their customer-facing staff. 

“Banks and credit unions must focus on building a distribution network that combines the qualities of human interaction with the power of new technologies,” Marous writes.

When it comes to targeted ads and other specified offers, data collection can be highly beneficial practices for FIs. In a survey, Mckinsey showed that triggered communications—typically featuring personalized product recommendations—contributed to 5-15% increases in revenue and 10-30% increases in marketing spending efficiency.

While those numbers alone are an incentive for FIs to be thinking about personalization in their digital marketing practices, there’s a lot more to the story. Enhanced selling isn’t the only benefit that personalization can have. As BCG stated in their publication on the topic, “Personalization in banking is not about selling, yet many banks tend to focus on the sales arena.”

Instead of being limited to the sales and marketing arena, personalization can comprise a large part of an FI’s strategy in coming years. “The combination of data, analytics, applied insights and new engagement models will open the door for an exponential increase in ideas and innovations for new products, services, engagement options and communication strategies,” writes Jim Marous.

With what he calls the “hybrid distribution model”, Marous says that banks and credit unions can meld technology and data collection with the assets provided by their customer-facing staff and their in-branch product experts. 

People are Just as Big a Part of the Equation as Technology Is

Balancing digital self-service technology with the engagement of FI representatives has been shown to lower the abandonment rate of services like loan applications and new account openings. Instead of exiting the page when they hit a snag, these customers are given the opportunity to work with the specialist that best fits their needs.

When they can’t access a branch, yet still need to complete a banking transaction that can’t be accomplished on their own, customers need to know that their FI will still be able to serve them. In the digital world, even collaborative, in-depth banking services need to be accessible outside the branch.

By showing your customers that your FI can deliver friendly, personalized service—whether it be through web, mobile, or in-branch channels—you do more than just enhance your customer satisfaction rating. You open the door to new opportunities, securing new streams of revenue and investing in your ongoing digital relevance.

To learn more about Digital Communications and the ways it could benefit your financial institution, schedule a free demo today!

Image of smiling call center employees

Surges, Staffing, and Strategy: How Financial Institutions can Stay Ahead with Digital Communications

By | Blog, Digital Communications

The pandemic has tested all of us. We’ve all changed our lives, our ways of doing business, the dynamics of our relationships, and more. For many of us, these changes have presented new challenges that have tested our patience and forced us to make sacrifices. For some of us, the cost has been far greater than an inconvenience or a missed opportunity. 

And now, a full two years after this all began, the COVID infection rate in the US is the highest it’s ever been. In-person appointments are being cancelled, remote work is being enacted (or reenacted), and Financial Institutions (FIs) across the country are rolling out digital platforms to serve their customers outside the branch.

These are a few of the reasons why Digital Communications is more important than ever before. With POPi/o, your FI can deliver all your personalized, branch-based services through convenient digital channels, allowing your team to safely serve customers in a convenient and cost-effective way. 

Staffing Struggles

Allowing banks and credit unions to operate safely in the midst of COVID surges is only one of the ways a Digital Communications platform could help your institution navigate the current landscape. Because, along with surges, many FIs are also facing serious staffing issues. According to The Financial Brand, 80% of community banks and credit unions believe their biggest concern going into 2022 is staffing. Many branches are staffed with only one or two employees, and some are limited to drive-thru-only service.

With such limited access and so few experts to serve their customers, it’s become hard for FIs to operate efficiently. Opportunities are lost, call centers are overloaded, and product experts are underutilized. But with an effective digital platform, your FI can serve a broad customer base, even with scaled-back staffing. 

Lending officers and other experts can work remotely or from a centralized location, eliminating the need to staff branches with all your product specialists. And with the integration of an AI assistant for simple customer service inquiries, you can lessen the workload for your call centers.

Digital Strategy

An effective digital strategy can not only act as a safety net from staffing struggles and COVID surges, but can also provide added benefits and new opportunities. Centralized lending departments can be enacted to make services more efficient than ever before. Expanded service hours are made possible through serving customers outside the branch. And everything from simple interactions to detailed, branch-based processes can be driven through convenient digital channels.

In an unpredictable world, FIs still need a reliable way to service customer relationships and deliver personalized services. With a Digital Communications platform from POPi/o, your FI has all the tools it needs to stay ahead of the curve—no matter what comes your way. 

Ready to learn more? Let’s talk.

Image of Hurricane Ida flooding

Braving the Storm: How POPi/o Helped Xplore FCU Serve Members During Hurricane Ida

By | Blog, Client Experiences, Digital Communications

When Lousiana-based Xplore Federal Credit Union implemented the POPi/o platform a year ago, they didn’t know how heavily they would come to rely on it come hurricane season.

This summer, the deadly and destructive Hurricane Ida struck the struck the gulf coast, leaving many without power, food, water, and other vital resources. In the video below, Xplore President and CEO, Rafael Rondon summarizes the palpable sense of relief his credit union felt knowing they at least had POPi/o to help them continue serving members through this difficult time.

Being a Louisiana-based financial institution, Rafael and his team were no strangers to hurricanes. They had seen the damage sustained in previous hurricanes. So, when Hurricane Ida arrived, they knew they’d have to think fast to keep their members taken care of.

“Hurricane Ida hit on Monday morning,” Rafael begins, detailing the experience. “But by Friday afternoon we were up and running using POPi/o.” Watch the video below to hear more on how Xplore got up and running so quickly.

Most of what they were doing was assisting people who had evacuated the area. They were greeted with members that were grateful in the face of difficulty.

Another way POPi/o was able to help the situation was by providing the technology for Xplore’s employees to work from home during the hurricane. With POPi/o’s flexible platform, the Xplore team was still able to deliver vital services to members from outside their office.

But POPi/o also helped Xplore handle more pressing matters. Using POPi/o’s uniquely extensive capabilities, Xplore was able to provide emergency loans to members who were affected by the hurricane. In the video clip below, you can hear Rafael explain the value this service provided during his members’ immense time of need.

“Our video banking department was processing something like 120 emergency loans during those last two or three weeks of the month, after Hurricane Ida—because, you know, our members needed those emergency funds,” Rafael says, detailing the urgency of the situation they faced.

When asked if he could imagine repeating the experience without POPi/o, Rafael states plainly, “I couldn’t imagine not having POPi/o… It’s a scary thought to be honest with you.”

While members were able to receive some limited services from the credit union over their phone lines and mobile apps, only POPi/o allowed them to deliver their personalized, comprehensive services that they’re known for. To hear Rafael’s full answer, watch the video below.

And if you’re interested in learning more about POPi/o’s Digital Customer Engagement platform, talk with one of our experts.

Dead End sign

The Ones That Got Away

By | Blog, Digital Communications

A closer look at the reasons for dead ends and abandonment in today’s digital banking services.

 

Well if that isn’t a captivating subtitle, I don’t know what is. But behind that statement is a real—and in some cases, dire—fact of digital banking services: Some of them don’t work.

Users begin processes on their phones and tablets, only to leave them incomplete. They run into snags or are told they have to visit a branch in order to proceed. So they close the app or the webpage, and leave the transaction unfinished.

Meanwhile, other digital services are able to provide the convenience and support needed to create a successful customer outcome. They give the user a host of quick and easy solutions, while also offering the full capabilities of a branch visit.

So, what does it take to make the cut? Why do some digital services outperform others? And why are digital banking services so important anyway? In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at what’s needed to offer a satisfying experience to today’s digital consumer.

Great Expectations

Meeting consumer needs has always been a challenge for businesses. And with the recent growth and disruption of emerging technology, providing customers with satisfying experiences has become something like trying to hit a moving target. 

Then, as if the situation wasn’t already complicated enough, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, profoundly affecting the standards consumers had for digital experiences. With many in-person transactions, services, and experiences shut down, consumers shifted their reliance to digital outlets. This meant that many businesses had to quickly and effectively provide a digital infrastructure to their customers.

But now digital services have become a prominent feature in the lives of many users. People have become adept at navigating various kinds of digital experiences. Because of this increase in digital adoption and user proficiency, people no longer tolerate an inefficient, frustrating user experience. They want services to be fast and comprehensive, they want their needs to be understood, and they want clear, navigable pathways to whatever they’re trying to accomplish.

After years of being well-versed in streamlined apps and online services, the average consumer has little patience for frustrations and roadblocks in the online world. 

Robot Rage

One area where these frustrations crop up is with chatbots. These tools, along with AI, automation, and self-service channels, can anger the customer, failing to understand their need, and offering no through-line to human assistance when requested. 

In banking, chatbots, AI, and self-service channels may be excellent tools for simple, high-frequency interactions. But when these limited services are all a customer is offered, they can be made to feel like their FI doesn’t value them as a customer, that it doesn’t want to provide them with a solution to their problem. 

Forbes noted in an article that though chatbots are being offered by an ever-increasing number of banks and credit unions, they continue to lead to fewer happy customers. Research shows that 22% of chatbot experiences lead to customers being “frustrated”, and a further 11% led to them being “angry”.

These sour experiences can erode brand loyalty, which is leading to many customers leaving their FI’s for more technologically-adept ones. This act of leaving one’s institution for another is called “customer churn”, and in the next few years, it’s expected to hit an all-time high. According to Foresight Research, the pandemic created a “hot spot of churn”. They found that customer churn increased from 12% to 22%, and is still on the rise. At some banks, it’s gotten as high as 27%, making it increasingly clear that effective digital services have become a vital aspect of customer retention. 

To many FI’s, this statistic should be a canary in a coal mine. The proliferation of digital services is not a trend, it’s a shift. And the businesses that don’t adapt to it will always run the risk of being left behind.

Don’t Settle for Dead Ends

Satisfying the digital consumer may seem like a daunting endeavor. Many FI’s are left wondering what digital services to implement, or whether the digital tools they have will still be relevant a few years from now.

But the best advice, as offered by Forbes and other outlets, is to provide a host of services, allowing users to find the appropriate level of assistance for their needs. The goal for any business in this position is to eliminate dead ends from their customers’ digital journey. If one particular point is causing hang-ups, frustrations, or high abandonment rates, it should be rethought to offer a more efficient and comprehensive pathway for the customer.

This idea especially applies to the services that banks and credit unions typically perform in branches. Applying for loans, opening new accounts, and speaking with experts about mortgages and investments are just a few examples of tasks that users struggle to complete through digital self-service channels. 

According to Jim Marous, publisher of the Digital Banking Report, the baseline abandonment rate for online users opening new accounts through self-service channels is 19%, and at some FI’s it’s as high as 75-80%. Furthermore, Javelin Research found that only 8% of mobile users seeking to open a new account were able to complete the process on their phones.

What’s the Solution?

For services like these, users are calling for a “mayday” button—a direct connection to the expertise they need to complete their desired task. This option seamlessly elevates the customer from the chatbot, self-service, or call-center roadblock that they’re facing, and puts them in touch with the banking professional they need to effectively resolve their issue.

Especially helpful for loans, new account openings, and other operations that comprise the majority of a typical FI’s revenue stream, this personalized, human-to-human service improves brand loyalty and digital satisfaction. 

It can be delivered over chat, voice, or collaborative video, giving users a satisfying digital alternative to the in-branch experience, and giving your FI a proven way to operate efficiently in the digital space.

At POPi/o, we know it can be tough to keep up with the changing demands of consumers. But finding an effective digital solution doesn’t have to be an arduous task. We’re here to help you discover and explore new options for managing customer relationships, because we know there’s nothing more important to you than being there for the people you serve.

If you’d like to learn more about the POPi/o Digital Communications platform, schedule a demo today.