Customer-focused UX in Banking
Over the past few years, User experience has emerged as an important focus area for banks. Customer-centric experience refers to how you manage the numerous interactions users have with you throughout their customer lifecycle in order to build a positive perception of your company.
Customers are now exposed to experiences similar to those offered by Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, which are highly intuitive and user-friendly. It’s only natural that they expect similar emphasis on user experience from the banking sector as well.. Customers want personalization, real-time interactions, great customer service, and outstanding customer support—and now they want it all in the palm of their hands too.
Banks need to deal with strict regulatory and compliance processes compared to most other sectors and industries, which restricts them to some extent. However, putting a greater emphasis on the user experience and mapping the user journey will undoubtedly benefit banks. When a consumer interacts with a bank, for example, whether remotely, in person, or over the phone, it is critical to provide a consistent experience.
This is accomplished through gaining a better understanding of your consumers and implementing tactics that encourage cross-functional collaboration and a customer-centric culture.
Why is understanding User experience important in Banking?
Primarily, one of the most Critical Key Differentiators in the CRM domain is User Experience. It is extremely important to understand UX in Banking.
Secondly, great customer experience inspires loyalty, which aids in customer retention, revenue growth, and development of stronger customer relationships.
Finally, the information acquired by monitoring user experience is an invaluable asset to any business driven to improve customer experience.
What are the challenges with Banking UX?
- Cumbersome User Interface : In the name of having an easy to use interface, the websites and apps have custom UIs that largely ignore platform conventions, and end up with confusing interactions.
- Simplicity of use : The majority of the features are not self-explanatory, and the user guides offered are ineffective in completing the task. As a result, the user is forced to contact customer service since he or she is unwilling to contact them.
- Speed : Turnaround time for any user complaints is not less than 24 hours.
- Fault tolerance: Banking services like URLs, mobile apps often go down when one or more of its components’ systems (computer, network, cloud cluster, etc.) fail.
What are banking customers’ expectations ?
- A novel method of interacting Ease and accessibility are important factors. Customers need to be able to get what they need when they need it, which is what accessibility is all about. And in today’s world, that means mobile-friendly and omnichannel.
- Fast problem solving/answers – Customers prefer to use self-service tools such as FAQs, knowledge bases, and chatbots rather than wait on the phone.
- Round the clock communication : be there all hours across all channels and provide banking services on a 24*7 basis
- Multifunctionality – Multifunctionality is a property inherent in financial tools. Banking tools that are originally designed as monofunctional tools.
- Transparency – More clarity in the provision of public information and improvements to internal controls inside banks are required not only to improve accountability, but also to correct the serious flaws that have been exposed.
- Personalization of data – Each client is treated as an individual and offer the customized services
- Trust- Customers must feel secure in the knowledge that their funds are in safe hands.
- Advice – Customers desire knowledge that will allow them to make better decisions regarding their money and financial objectives. This aids in the development of stronger bonds.
What are banking customers’ expectations ?
Before we talk about improvisation of UX, let us take a look at how SERVQUAL helps us.
Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988, 15) created the SERVQUAL to discover various gaps between customers’ expectations and the service offered by a company. Customer expectations refer to the desires and hopes that customers have prior to receiving a service, whereas customer expectations refer to how they feel about the service they received. Customer dissatisfaction happens when expectations are higher than actual performance. The smaller these gaps, on the other hand, the higher the service quality.
Having said that, below image depicts , seamlessly integrating banking services to every aspect of life
- Automation : A new way to IT-enable banking operations, enable rapid-automation approaches and achieve promising results. Chatbots are another useful tool for assisting customers at scale. Chatbots can be used by both potential and existing customers to acquire information on new items or account activity at any time and from any location.
- Listen to Customers : Pay attention to what all the customers have to say in every medium of communication. If they have a question-answer immediately. If they have a complaint, take them seriously and respond accordingly. Be accountable for all the user complaints. Understand their anxiety and handle it empathetically if they rage on social media platforms.
- Keep customer information simple and organized : Need a mechanism to manage and implement client data if you want to create customized experiences. Banks can recommend more relevant content or goods by tracking previous interactions and preferences. It’s also useful to keep track of consumer activities for future customer care conversations. If a customer service representative has access to a customer’s whole activity history, they can avoid asking the same questions or giving them advice that isn’t relevant.
- Transparency matters : Transparency is another potential competitive advantage that your financial institution might employ. Ensure that employee and customer knowledge bases are current: While having live chat, chatbots, and other tools to assist clients is fantastic, all of your efforts will be for naught if your knowledge base is out of date. After all, your customer service representatives require precise information in order to handle issues and provide a consistent experience.
- Improvise Customer care – Natural language processing (NLP) appears to be one of the more popular AI technologies in banking, according to studies. Sentiment analysis is a capability of natural language processing that entails detecting whether a section of open-ended natural language writing (which can be transcribed from audio) is positive, negative, or neutral in its attitude toward the topic at hand. Sentiment analysis systems based on AI look for subjects, themes, and categories inside sentences and utilise NLP and machine learning to quantify (as a positive number, negative number, or zero) sentiments. In order to improve client experiences, large banks can use AI-based sentiment analysis software to evaluate customer opinions about their brand or products.
- Communicate from anywhere : Communicating with customers wherever they are is a part of an omnichannel experience. You can send updates and suggestions via email in addition to in-app notifications based on behavioral data. Reaching out to clients outside of the app maintains your brand in the forefront of users’ minds and keeps them engaged over time. Email can be used to inform a person who is at risk of overdrawing their account, provide investment updates, or promote new products.
- Establish feedback loops : Feedback is the final component of a great customer experience plan. Setting up opportunities for feedback and consumer sentiment score ensures that problems are caught before they become too serious. It’s important to collect feedback so that you can adjust your services and strategy as client needs change.
- Personalized Experience: Adopt innovation from Fintech offerings and personalize each user’s business transaction.
Final Thoughts :
A customer-centric approach combines the requirements of internal users and customers. Customers receive all kinds of status information and direct touchpoints exposed to the customer portal, while internal users gain an overview and customer insights. The system can react to the gathered insights once the lifecycle and context have been managed. As a result, the customer experience has improved, transaction costs have fallen, and automation has increased substantially.
Finally, it’s important to remember that user experience isn’t just about flashy graphics and fancy features. Any attempt to improve the user experience will be successful only if you have the data analytics to back it up. As a result, the key to success will be to take a holistic solution-centric approach to user experience that balances client preferences with legal needs.
It’s all about the customer : Keep your focus on them, and they will reward you with their loyalty.