Banking consumers expect financial institutions to interact like any other technology or retail brand. In a world where only 20% of customers use physical channels, but 73% of U.S. adults bank online at least once per month, more customers are leveraging their multiple channel capabilities. And this compels the financial institutions to be even more agile about omnichannel banking.
Like any other customer-centric industry, the banking sector is also evolving with the needs of the consumer. Therefore, digital banking strategies turn into a heated race on creating the best customer experience to meet expectations and gain an advantage in competition.
At this point, channel innovation and product development with the best customer journeys have become the central focus of the global financial sector because the most fertile interaction method with customers occurs on digital channels.
What is Omnichannel Banking?
Omnichannel banking entails making general banking services available to customers in all offline and digital channels. Evidently, the subject in omnichannel banking mentioned here is not only creating multi-channel digital customer journeys that appear as a new version of banking.
In Omnichannel banking, no matter on which channel they started using banking transactions, customers should be able to continue their banking operations seamlessly, either through digital or offline channels. Of course, this gives banking a brand new perspective where customer experience can only be brought to perfection by providing the same quality of service on all channels both online and offline.
The Importance of Omnichannel in Retail Banking
The first and possibly most important benefit for financial institutions is that omnichannel banking provides automatic management of processes by balancing the need for human interaction.
This ensures both minimizing the need for investment in the workforce and eliminating the possibility of errors and fraud. So, in addition to meeting customer expectations, omnichannel offers a great ROI to financial institutions.
Customers can now carry out information and transactions which they could only obtain with human interaction through different channels. This ensures that they do not have to go to the bank branch or lock the call center lines, as they used to, for their smallest needs.
Actually, this is a win-win situation. But omnichannel banking, which comes with digital banking for financial institutions, is not limited to these benefits.
How Omnichannel Banking Adds Value to Financial Services
We have listed some of the benefits that omnichannel banking provides for financial institutions and their customer services:
Improved Customer Support
Customers want to bring up and solve all problems related to the services on their devices, real-time because this method is both easier and faster. Omnichannel banking seamlessly integrates the customer support center, chatbot, video tutorials, and other interaction models in communication to meet customer expectations.
Data Synchronization
Bank customers may have already entered a lot of information when they started trading and they may want to continue later or when their transactions are interrupted due to a problem. Thanks to Omnichannel banking solutions, even if they change the communication channel when they want to continue their customer journeys, they do not have to enter the same data over and over again.
Data Analytics
The system automatically stores all customer transactions performed on all channels as analyzable and processable data. Thanks to cross-channel data analytics, financial institutions have deep insights into customer journey patterns. Afterwards, they can use this data for discounts that they set up to achieve customer satisfaction or for marketing activities as specific offers.
Digital security
The crucial feature of omnichannel banking transactions is the multi-factor authentication transactions. To facilitate this, there are many security tools like passwords, SMS verification, mobile app verification, Google Authenticator and more. A particular combination of these tools makes digital banking convenient and effective while keeping users’ data safe.
Lower Costs
Omnichannel banking undertakes routine and complex tasks that reduce operational costs and enable bank employees to focus on other value-creating activities, by minimizing human interaction with digital banking tools.
Building the Best Omnichannel Banking Strategy
Adapt to Customer-First Approach
Today, customer needs are shaping retail industries and customer-centered technologies. Gathering customer data, analyzing this data and using it with the right strategy provides much more personalized and value-added services. As other industries invest in these innovations and technologies, customer expectations evolve and future-oriented financial institutions follow their path.
Through interactive digital banking channels, banks can easily follow and make sense of their customers’ preferences. Thus, with this rich customer data and insights, banks can turn themselves into smart organizations. In order for banks to understand where, when and how their customers interact, customer data silos must first be broken down and integrated. Then, customer data needs to be collected and analyzed to develop a full understanding of each customer.
The ability of a bank to understand its customers at this level and to create communication patterns with this attitude can turn them into relevant and valuable financial partners.
Build a Consistent Brand Value
As mentioned before, most consumers now access bank services through digital channels. But some still prefer face-to-face or call centers for human interaction, and some banks build their brands around this value. At this point, community banking offers financial institutions high-value opportunities to create strong brands and maintain market share.
The main thing is the endurance of your branding and how to consistently translate it across all channels. Because regardless of which channels are used, consumers always want to see more than an anonymous banking relationship, especially since finances and money are a sensitive issue.
Channel integration is the most basic way to provide a personal and consistent customer experience that creates brand value.
Invest in Innovation, Deliver Value
Today, banks have to offer consumers more than traditional bank services and products in order to take a competitive advantage. Considering the new and agile actors participating in the financial sector, it is becoming easier for consumers to switch to non-bank providers to manage their financial services.
For market-leading innovative financial institutions, having their own innovation laboratories won’t be enough. Also, It will be critical to engage in new initiatives and open software innovators to speed up the innovation process in digital banking.
Be Prepared for the Next Digital Evolution
We have mentioned that banks can digitize processes so that they can use less human labor and reduce both costs and the risk of error. In Foreks, armed with innovative technology, we develop tailor-made, highly secure, reliable and scalable omnichannel solutions to help financial institutions deliver maximum value to their business.
We blend artificial intelligence, predictive analysis, and blockchain technologies with extensive Foreks data processing know-how and DevOps expertise to deliver highly secure, reliable, and scalable digital platforms.
Discover ForInvest’s FinTech Solutions developed by a skilled team of developers with over 30 years of financial software development experience and be prepared to pioneer the next digital evolution.