4 ways banks can improve customer experience

Senior Content Marketing Specialist

Dipti Panchwadkar

Senior Content Marketing Specialist

Regulation and compliance. Unpredictable customer loyalty. Fintech competitors. As if reputation problems and thin profit margins weren’t sufficient, the last couple of years have brought on an unprecedented uptake of digital and contactless banking channels by customers, leaving banks scrambling to navigate virtual relationships.

This diverse blend of challenges confronting banks makes it easy to understand why so many are now committed to enhancing customer experience to truly differentiate themselves in a highly competitive ecosystem.

Banks have come to realize that a superior customer experience is worth just as much as a superior product in terms of deepening customer loyalty, decreasing costs, improving revenue, and increasing employee satisfaction.

Reducing friction is at the core of ensuring seamless customer experiences in banking and here are some ways of interacting that can help banks achieve this.

Enable balance checks via chat

If your customers are looking to complete a simple task such as checking their account balance, they need to open your mobile app or log in to your online banking website. This can cause friction and leave customers turning to digital-first banking alternatives.

Chatbots make completing these types of tasks effortless for customers by enabling them to send a message through an app they already use, such as WhatsApp, to get an instant answer. Customers can get a response within seconds without the need to type in their credentials or remove their face masks to access their mobile banking apps.

Provide real-time insights

While personal finance dashboards are available to customers through banking apps and websites, they benefit only those who proactively log in to check these insights.

One way to grow long-lasting relationships with customers is to send them real-time messages about their spending patterns.

For example, you can send them an alert that they’ve spent 90% of their “eating out” budget for this month. You can also give customers the ability to set monthly savings targets, spending categories, and receive real-time messages to help them stay on track.

Automate tedious processes

When customers want to apply for a loan, they need to go through a grueling process of innumerable calls with customer service agents, provide countless documents to prove eligibility, and then are often kept waiting until they hear back. This tedious process can lead to an increase in customer drop-offs.

With the use of chatbots, you can easily save the expense of deploying customer service agents for requests that may not convert and spare customers the pain of jumping through hoops.

You can use chatbots to quickly collect important information from customers such as the amount required, the duration, current income, and proof of identity.

The chatbot can process this information and inform customers about their eligibility within hours.

If the customer agrees to proceed with the credit offer, the chatbot can connect them to an agent to seamlessly continue the procedure.

Help customers be proactive with payments

Missed loan payments or unpaid credit card bills are often dealt with warning emails and calls.

A more proactive, win-win approach would be to understand the challenges stopping customers from paying and how you can help them get back on course.

Instead of sending out one-sided notices and spending time chasing customers over phone, set up a chatbot to interact with customers and find out when they will be able to make the payments, understand if it is part of a larger issue, and fix up a schedule for repayment.

Additionally, you can use chatbots to educate customers about the consequences of missed payments such as a decrease in credit score, credit worthiness, and late fees that need to be paid over the EMI that is due.

You can send out messages that help customers plan their finances better and give them alternatives to missing the payment altogether, for instance, making partial payments or a temporary EMI-free period.

Get started with AI-powered messaging

As banking continues to move towards virtual, contactless experiences, AI-powered messaging gives you the ability to build meaningful customer relationships.

In fact, with chatbot building platforms like Answers that don’t require any coding, and cloud contact center solutions like Conversations, delivering personalized customer experiences has never been easier.

Mar 7th, 2022
3 min read

Dipti Panchwadkar

Senior Content Marketing Specialist