Financial institutions usually aim to sustain and increase their customer base via acquisition and retention efforts yet over 70% of customer experience leaders have not been able to develop successful strategies that will increase customer loyalty and drive business growth, stated in the Gartner Customer Experience Research Team 2019 report.

Banks would need to consistently try to satisfy customers and build emotional connection that will cause loyalty. Using customer data to offer personalized experiences. Increasing engagement on all mobile channels, on social networks and focusing on customers’ needs not just on the opportunity for product sale, will cause strong relationships and customers will feel valued. Also, branch agents can engage with customers as they arrive at the banking all, answering queries, showing care and commitment to serve them better.

Effective steps to improving customer experience in Banking include:

 

  • Dynamic Customer Experience and Enterprise strategy: Having a dynamic CX strategy provides a road map for the delivery of quality and swift customer experience and helps to define the appropriate approach to product innovations, obtaining customer feedbacks, dynamic loyalty programme, and technology transformation. A wholistic approach is necessary and an enterprise-wide strategy is critical to avoid only focusing on small tactical improvements in few customer journeys, a finextra report states.
  • Innovate on Products: Large data at banks disposal can be analysed to understand customer preferences and make smarter decisions to improve offerings.  Ensuring new products and features can be integrated immediately within offerings would enable financial institutions to standout in competitive markets. At the core of customer experience for both physical branch and digital platform is quality of service and innovative products that customers would love and appreciate.
  • Quality & Swift Service delivery:- Improving customer loyalty begins with delivering quality services. Customers expects swift issue resolution, and personalized experiences. Customers become loyal through digital interactions, convenience and quality service delivery, a recent article by thefinancialbrand states. When quality and prompt service delivery become the main priory of a bank, the probability of customers moving to other competitors will be little. They easily become brand ambassadors and advertisers to family, friends and associates.
  • Providing Financial Insight:- Personalization, trust and friction-less customer journeys should also be the focus of financial institutions. Offering personalized advice to customers at every stage of their financial journey would imply that banks care about them and fosters strong relationships that will cause customer loyalty.
  • Dynamic loyalty program:- Having a dynamic reward program is a way of appreciating and engaging with customers. A single act of lowering fees for high volume transactions may put smiles on your customers faces. Examples of some top bank’s loyalty programs include:
      • CITI: Citibank allow customers earned points via numerous means and collect them via a ThankYou member Account. Customers can shop with points, pay bills with points, donate to charity and more.
      • Bank of America: The bank uses a tier based system to reward customers that have maintained a stipulated rate through bonuses and fee exemptions.
      • Wells Fargo’s reward program offers cash bonuses and fee exemption on credit card purchases according to stipulated figure s within 3 months of opening the user account. Reward can be selected as merchandise, gift cards, travel and digital downloads, and more.
      • Dutsche Bank’s express reward is available for all Savings Account holders. Customers are rewarded points for their daily activities and a minimum of 400 points to a maximum of 1250 points can be collected per month at no charges. The points can be tracked online and redeemable within a 12 months period.
    • Barclays bank offers customers cashbacks on selected products, from many retailers and award financial prizes for using specific bank products. For instance, £3.50 for each of the first two direct debit payments, £1 for using Platinum Barclaycard,  about £3 for insurance and more. Customers also get cashbacks when shopping with selected retailers such as Adidas, Lego and others.
  • Deliver Omnichannel Experience:- Real-time Chatbots and virtual agents are becoming mainstream enabling many financial institutions to reinvent their customer experience by offering virtual assistance to customers via digital platforms. Customer Communication solutions like JETHRO’s jDelivery enable you to engage with customers by sending personalized and complementary messages for birthday greetings, event invites and more via SMS alerts, mail notification, marketing campaigns, and more, also provides the opportunity for emotional connection and positive impact on loyalty, stated finextra report
In conclusion, helping customers to swiftly solve their problems will cause loyalty. For instance, Ally bank combined digital platform experience with human support and increased its customer base to 1.9 million, $100 billion in deposits and claims of 90% retention rate. Banks can partner with FinTech companies to provide real-time banking services and Omnichannel experiences across all digital touch points. For example, Temenos recently integrated Kony, its user engagement platform, with its infinity product now enabling banks to accelerate customer acquisition, “increase digital revenues by five times, cutting customer onboarding time by 75%,  providing other advanced capabilities that can positively impact on loyalty” and JETHRO is here to assist.