Nowadays End Customers demand a unified and real-time experience on all touchpoints for financial services. The current dynamics of digital innovation and the evolving needs of consumers will drive customer engagement which will be seamless across all touchpoints. Being digitally focused, customers now expect more exceptional services across platforms – Omnichannel Banking.

Assuming the threats for digital disruption, Financial Institutes need to walk with the speed of digitalization and increase investments to improve digital channel design and engagement. Engaging an effective Omni channel approach is a tactical strategy for banks to win customers who demand convenience and simplicity irrespective of the kind of channels they use for accessing banking services.

The ever-changing dynamics of Customer engagement and rapid increase of the digital space have forced the Financial institute to provide digital access to the consumer which is overshadowing the traditional channels used by legacy banks and adapt the digital challenges.

To achieve the seamless experience, the first requirement is integration between digital and physical channels and have an Omni channel approach, which will bring flexibility to engage the customers and leverage the conversation across multiple platforms to provide personalized services and offers. The above strategy will provide analytics on the customers’ behavior, spending pattern, and interaction across all touchpoints cost-effectively and efficiently.

How is the Omni Channel Strategy Influencing Banking Industries?

According to MIT Sloan Management Review, “companies having 50% or more of their revenues from digital ecosystems and had a better understanding of their end customers than their competitors were able to achieve 32% higher revenue growth and 27% higher profit margins than the industry averages.

Banks can leverage huge opportunities by adopting the Omni channel strategy and it helps them to enhance their services while at the same time optimize their costs effectively. However, banks have to identify the preferred channel of their customers as well as the potential of banking technology and find a way to connect them both to the Omni channel world.

Benefits of Digitalisation in Banking Services

  • Increase liveliness and Speed to Market
  • Technology and Operations Configured for Business Agility
  • Improve Operational Efficiency and Transparency
  • Enhance Institutional and Market Efficiency
  • Improve Bank Cost Efficiency

What does Omni-channel delivery mean for Banks?

“Zero drop rate” Channel Integration

Banks having a “zero drop rate” can synchronize various touchpoints and work on the missteps that happen when a customer hops from one channel to another. This means the customer doesn’t have to re-authenticate his/her identity each time when transferred to a different channel. Also, using a bank’s mobile app will enable the customer to understand and use the bank’s internet banking or tablet app easily.

To put this into action, banks must understand their customer usage habits and streamline their systems to deliver the same feel and structure. This allows the customer to pick up at the exact point where he/she left off and natural transit to another channel to complete his/her action.

Mutually Strengthening Channels

The mutual reinforcement of the physical and digital channels will help banks to deliver amazing, channel-agnostic customer experiences at scale. Banks can support the digitization of the branch with video-enabled advice, digital signage, 24X7 banking kiosks that interact with customers in multiple languages, etc., at the branch.

By leveraging digital technologies such as chat, video, social media, and instant messenger, contact centers can provide enhanced customer support and service from a single platform. Recognizing the requirement to humanize digital interactions at the appropriate steps is also equally important. For instance, a live video chat from either the bank’s mobile banking application or website can improve the customer experience significantly.

Banks can enhance the customer experience further by following the examples from other industries. For instance, several car rental companies have launched kiosks that enable customers can rent a car via a live video chat with a customer service rep. This not only boosts customer experience but also minimizes the operation costs for the car rental company.

Customer Engagement with A Broader Ecosystem

A broader ecosystem that comprises of third-party channels and products helps banks to engage with the modern and digital customer. To accomplish this, banks have to provide a set of APIs to incorporate their services and functionalities into third-party apps. For instance, PayPal uses APIs to expose its services to third-parties and enables them to embed its functionalities into their web and mobile applications. Similarly, banks can deliver third-party merchandize and products via banking channels.