Managing digital bank customers
According to the 2017 Global Consumer Trends Survey, more than 80 per cent of globally connected consumers are using mobile connectivity to browse the internet on a weekly basis.
In addition, the survey found out that consumers in the 18-24-years-old bracket are the heaviest users of digital products/channels, with 82 per cent of smartphone owners in this demographic segment using mobile banking.
Furthermore, according to PwC’s Digital Banking Survey of 2017, 46 per cent of banking consumers used only digital channels, a substantial increase from the 27 per cent recorded in 2012.
It is obvious that customer’s hunger for digital and mobile interaction for banking services won’t stop growing hence banks need to adjust to this new “norm”.
The banking industry has been working hard to deliver a better experience on digital channels but in today’s world, consumers have more power to choose from different products and services at their fingerprints 24/7.
Hence, digital channels no longer just represent “a cheaper and convenient way” but are a critical aspect in executing promotions, stimulating sales, and growing market share for banks.
The challenge for banks isn’t just to create and deploy new technology to facilitate simple transactions (e.g. transferring money or checking balances), but to rethink how to build and maintain relationships with their digital customers and to provide value to customers throughout different life stages.
So, to keep up with digital customers, banks need to take a different approach to manage them. Here are a few tips on this:
Invest in advanced analytics – Banks must invest in advanced analytics of a large amount of financial and non-financial data at their disposal to gain a 360-degree view of their customers.
Banks can only achieve this by being vigorous on the collection of customer data, by investing in and developing systems that mine consumers data and partnering with Fintechs to develop behavioural financial models.
Through the data collected, banks will obtain a broader perspective of customer activity, transactions, mental state and emotions, allowing banks to become more relevant and contextual.
Digital customer’s behaviour is completely different from traditional ones, therefore, banks will be able to learn the behaviours of their digital customers and provide recommendations on what products and services fit their customer’s lifestyle and goals.
This is only possible because banks are able to craft a compelling customer experience where all the interactions are specifically tailored to a customer’s needs at any given time.
Build an Agile Marketing Plan – To manage digital customers, banks need to support their countless interactions and must find ways to be more agile in their marketing operations.
Currently, banks tend to launch campaigns focused on pushing a single product at a time across a range of channels.
This approach will not yield desired results from digital customers as they are more sophisticated and easily bored with the same selling message of products/services.
To serve digital customers, banks must be willing to conduct a lot of small-scale marketing activities involving a variety of products and third-party providers using advanced digital tools and processes. These small-scale marketing activities must be supported by a marketing team that has the right digital skills and tools to create and maintain creative marketing campaigns that relate to digital consumers.
Building an agile marketing plan will take time, therefore, banks must embrace a new approach and ensure the entire staff is aligning with it.
In a summary, banks need to re-invent to remain competitive. According to PwC’s Digital Banking Survey of 2017, 46 per cent of banking consumers used only digital channels, a substantial increase from the 27 per cent recorded in 2012.
Hence, the future of the banking industry will depend on its ability to leverage the power of customer insights, advanced analytics and digital technology to provide services and products to its digital consumers.
