How Omnichannel Banking is Reshaping Retail Banking
Over the years, a massive transformation in the way consumers do banking has taken place. Digital technology has disrupted the banking sector. Nowadays, basic transactions in banks are speedily migrating from physical to digital. All thanks to Digital Payment Solutions. The omnichannel approach has been adopted by the majority of banks at the core of their operations. They have understood the innovation and how it brings ease, simplicity, and accessibility to platforms provided by FinTech companies and their FinTech App Development Services which develop Digital Wallet Solution and various other Digital Payment Solutions and How Omnichannel Banking is Reshaping Retail Banking
What is Omnichannel Banking?
Omnichannel Banking offers the same services to the customer across all the channels whether they are digital or offline. It means that the users can avail all the banking operations from a website, mobile app, the bank branch itself, a call center, or any other available channel. A true Omnichannel Banking platform comes with real-time data synchronization across all channels. For example, users can begin the onboarding process on one channel and finish it on another without providing the same data over and over again. Implications for back-office operations include marketing performance, simplify the onboarding process, boost customer retention rates, and much more. According to McKinsey, 60% of all banking customers use digital channels. Banks need to facilitate data exchange between customers and themselves to get insights on customer journeys. In an omnichannel landscape, the bank needs to track every interaction with a customer. As a result, they need to process exponentially more data on a management basis. Omnichannel banking platform improves customer service in three ways:
- Digital-first approach: Digital Payment Solutions offer ways to perform transactions via mobile and web applications. Customers can send money, write cheques, apply for loans, order credit or debit cards with the banking apps. This is the most common feature of any omnichannel banking platform.
- Customer support on any device: If a customer has a complaint to be raised for any service-related issue, they can quickly do it via their own devices. Omnichannel banking integrated customer support centre, chatbot in mobile app, and other communication channels.
- Real-time data synchronization: There is no need to re-enter the same data again and again once a transaction is done or an issue is raised. All this data is synced in real-time across all platforms. So, even if you switch communication channels in the process, your data is updated and shown to you.
Multichannel to Omnichannel
As the name implies, multichannel means simply that a bank provides services through more than one channel which typically includes branch, ATM, call centre, internet banking, and mobile banking. However, services across channels might not be the same and may not be provided in a consistent way. This is why banks must act now to transform their multichannel offerings into a truly omnichannel banking experience. While banks discuss this transformation, they often neglect its implications for internal steering and management practices. Such factors need to be touched upon in the boardroom in order to smoothen the process. What really makes omnichannel differ from multichannel banking? Here you go:
- Consistency: Though the user interface is not identical, the services should be the same. The way transactions work and the outcomes need to be consistent and easy to understand.
- Persistency: This means that the bank remembers the client’s transactions or issues raised regardless of the channels used to do so.
Based on the previous interactions of the client with the bank, again regardless of the channel, the bank makes personalized suggestions. When a bank can do this, it can truly say it is providing Omnichannel Banking. Analytics can increase sales productivity by as high as 40%. This is why banks should get crucial insights on customer behaviors through the highest number of resources to help them tailor and target their offerings more precisely. Having a motivated and equipped sales team, reducing mis-spelling, conveying analytics to the relationship manager to apply personalized insights are all essential to increase customer retention rate. It is high time for banks to implement and develop Digital Wallet Solution for easy digital payment. That is what Fintech app development company are for. In daily banking operations, here is how an omnichannel banking platform helps a customer:
Fred wants to increase his daily online spending limit on his card. He opens the XYZ Bank’s app and taps “Online Support”, and types in his question.
- A chatbot uses its Natural Language Processing algorithms to identify Fred’s question. Thorough instructions are provided to Fred on how he can change the spending limit via the app. Chatbots can resolve these fairly simple issues with zero or very little human interaction.
- If the bot doesn’t have a ready answer for a question, it tries to extract keywords from the request to categorize it for the customer support team.
- If Fred taps “Talk to the branch manager”, a human representative of the bank takes over the conversation.
- The bank representative now has the basic information he needs as the chatbot has categorized the request based on keywords. There is no need for the client to repeat it all again.
- After this interaction, Fred still feels the need to have a live consultation with a banking manager. All the data about Fred’s request is automatically synced via the banking platform. When Fred arrives at the bank branch, the employee already knows he has raised a request online and can resolve the problem in a matter of minutes.
Conclusion
FinTech App Development Services are putting tremendous pressure on banks to go digital. Banks are also responding to this as they develop Digital Wallet Solution for easy payments. There is a rise in the demand for a seamless omnichannel banking platform where a user can start onboarding a service from a digital channel and then switch to a non-digital channel or vice-versa seamlessly without losing their progress. For top-notch customer experience, the next step for all the banks is to create a robust omnichannel banking platform. We will see in the coming years how retail banks are ramping up their omnichannel infrastructure to compete with FinTech companies.