8 Ways Banking and Financial Services Can Improve Customer Experience
Want to keep your customers loyal? The world’s leading professionals have noted that Customer Experience is the answer.
In fact, it is more crucial than ever in the financial industry. With so many options for customers to invest their money, it’s not just about offering better rates and more returns, but about the overall customer experience, you create.
In fact, it is the lack of this that has made many customers leave – and what’s worse, customers that have switched financial institutions often believe that they wouldn’t have done so had the bank only reached out to make amends.
So how do you ensure that you aren’t one of those banks?
Unlike before, clients now have more options. Banking and financial services need to ensure the highest level of customer experiences to retain a loyal client base. Especially since most of the queries are often matters of urgency.
So whether it’s a lost credit card, a false charge, or an inquiry into opening a new account – the way you deal with it can make or break your CX.
Here are some impactful ways by Krause Leia, a great market researcher, to implement customer experience and transform your customers’ outlook at every stage:
Implement All Channel Feedback
If you want to understand just how to bridge the experience gap between expectations and reality – and grow your business revenue – the best place to start is with feedback.
Implement real-time feedback channels at every critical stage using surveys. This will help you gauge the pulse of your customers and give you insights about the critical pain-points across your organization.
Branch Visit Feedback
Follow up on an in-person experience with customers immediately after their visit with feedback surveys sent out on email. Alternatively, you can give them an electronic survey on a tablet at the end of their visit. The best feedback you get is when the memory is still fresh, so make sure to follow up quickly afterward.
Customer Service Feedback
Customer service calls can often be quite emotionally taxing since these pertain to critical issues including delayed payments, card misplacement, and more. So it’s essential that your customer service executives are giving customers the best possible experience. Make sure this is so with a quick follow-up survey to identify and bridge potential pain-points.
Online Experiences Feedback
The world is digital. Many of your customers probably interact with you via your website or mobile app for the most part – so it’s essential that these platforms are easy to use.
Implement feedback surveys following certain work-flows to know if the app is easy to use and intuitive. If not, what makes it confusing for your customers?
Identifying this could be the key to delivering a commendable online experience.
Relationship Feedback
Perhaps your customers have feedback for you but it isn’t pertaining to anything in particular. Relationship surveys give you a holistic perspective of what your customers think. Maybe there are some aspects they believe need improvement, or perhaps they have some suggestions. Distribute relationship surveys regularly to keep a check on how your customers are feeling and stay on top of the feedback!
Identify Critical Business Drivers
It’s more expensive to get new customers than to retain existing ones. So focus on what the key drivers are and realign your priorities to ensure a better CX.
While customers on average tend to stay with their banks for longer, the increasingly competitive environment also gives them more choice. That’s why it’s essential that you not only understand what makes your customers stay but also identify why customers have left your bank.
Was it perhaps the lack of locations and accessibility, a bad customer service experience, or did they not have the best in-person experience? Knowing the key drivers for your organization will help you focus your energies on only the critical weaknesses and rapidly improve experiences.
Take Action
Identify the critical drivers for your business using CSAT, NPS, or CES scores and implement corrective action to ensure that customers have a better experience.
By gathering and analyzing customer satisfaction scores, you can easily improve the customer journey, thereby increasing retention and reducing the churn rate.
Monitor the Entire Customer Journey Experience
The best way to understand and improve experience gaps is by understanding the requirements of each interaction and delivering on them.
So begin by creating a customer journey map wherein you can understand customers based on their profile and ensure that each interaction meets their expectations.
From the moment a customer first comes across your brand to achieve the desired action, a customer journey map will help you optimize each instance. So whether it was that online ad, a follow-up or promotional email, or perhaps an in-person experience – ensure that each interaction is designed to increase brand recall and value.
Predict Customer Churn
What is your customer’s feeling? Has each experience had the desired impact?
Send out pulse surveys to keep a constant tab.
Moreover, did you know that most of the customers that leave never even tell you why? The best way to combat this is by implementing an easily accessible feedback channel.
A customer-support chat, support email, and even a follow-up survey immediately following interactions gives your customers a chance to vent – especially if the experience didn’t meet their expectations.
And while you strive to ensure excellent CX, always remember that a bad experience is also an opportunity.
Monitor these and follow up with individual customers to make amends.
Just taking that small step can ensure that you significantly reduce churn!
Track and Address Customer Feedback
Not all feedback is given to you.
Keep an eye out on third party review websites and social media channels to know your customers’ feedback.
What your customers are saying here is being viewed by the world. So here is where you can make your voice heard as well.
Set up a team to personally respond to reviews and experiences. Make an attempt to improve the situation by responding to and following up on the feedback received.
Not only will this help you retain more customers, but it will show the world that you have a customer-centric attitude.
So all in all, a double win!
Analyze and Integrate CX with EX
It’s no secret that happy employees lead to satisfied customers.
Customer Experience and Employee Experience is inextricably intertwined. So if you’re noticing that a customer service experience wasn’t ideal, try to understand why.
Only focusing on CX is often a short-term solution. It may help you improve an experience without reaching its root cause.
By analyzing CX and EX together, you might notice that perhaps employees aren’t able to deliver the most customer-centric experiences because they are under-staffed. If this is the case, then analyzing the situation further may reveal that the cost of hiring more employees might be worth the improved experiences (and therefore the increased customer retention!)
Be Flexible and Ever-Evolving
The world is constantly evolving, and banking and financial services need to keep up.
Customers are being prioritized across industries, so it’s obvious that they expect the same from their financial services providers as well. As a result, it’s imperative that you offer competitive services.
Implement new features that see the most demand, ask for customer feedback, and ensure a closed-loop system to deliver experiences that go above and beyond.
Conclusion
While banking and financial services are essential for every customer, the increasing number of choices has made customer retention a top priority.
Customers often come to you at their most vulnerable. Money-matters have a tendency to stress people out. That’s why it’s up to you to deliver an experience that puts them at ease. After all, when a customer approaches you in a heightened emotional state, even the slightest bad experience can have a terrible backlash.
So implement CX strategies that enhance each experience and you will notice the difference, not only in customer loyalty but in revenue growth!
