How Important is Customer Experience in Financial Services

It’s super important for financial services to focus on customer experience since it affects their customer retention, reputation, and CX operations.

This could mean better response rates, automations, and positive experiences across all touchpoints and channels.

Unfortunately, the financial services industry has been slow to make the switch from product-focused to client-focused. But there are some companies that are leading the way.

Here are five ways in which financial services organizations can improve their customer experience.

1.     Improve response rates

One of the most demanding requests that customers are asking is a fast customer response. Unfortunately, speed has become one of the major differentiators in the contact center industry. Whoever can answer faster to a customer inquiry wins.

There are a few ways for financial service companies to improve speed of response:

• Implement advanced call routing functionality – this is one way to ensure that customers are connected to the right agent as quickly as possible.
• Include self-service options – providing customers with self-service options such as online chatbots and interactive voice messaging (IVM) can reduce wait times and improve response rates. Most of the self-service options can be applicable to fervently asked questions or simple tasks such as checking account balances or making a quick payment.
• Provide training to agents – ensure that your agents are properly trained to support your customers efficiently. Ongoing training keeps agents up-to-speed on new services or products you might be offering, so doing that continuously will improve your client and contact center performance.

2.     Deliver positive experiences across all touchpoints and channels

To ensure customers have a positive experience, financial service providers need to understand their customers and make sure their processes are streamlined and easy to use.

A few ways you can deliver consistent CX across all channels is by:

• Personalizing the experience with data and analytics
• Investing in technology
• Training staff
• Measuring analytics

It’s also important to monitor and measure the CX to identify areas that need improvement. Doing all this can help build customer loyalty and drive growth.

3.     Introduce automation

To get the most out of automation in CX for financial services, it’s important to define your goals, analyze processes for inefficiencies, choose the right automation tools, develop an implementation plan, test, and refine, train your staff, and monitor and measure.

Doing so helps streamline processes, cut costs, and improve the customer experience.

Financial businesses can use different kinds of CX transformation to improve their customer experience. Here are some examples:

• Chatbots and virtual assistants to offer instant help
• IVR systems to automatically do routine tasks like balance checks
• Personalization engines to give tailored product recommendations
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate back-office stuff
• Predictive analytics to understand customer needs
• Fraud prevention with machine learning
• Workflow automation to make processes faster

By using these technologies, financial companies can make customers happier, save money, and be more efficient.

4.     Align with your customers’ needs and expectations

Customers are crying for optimized, relevant, personalized communications that are easy to get.

Especially in the banking or financial sector where there is a major disconnect between expectation and reality. In fact, 1 in 3 customers have switched banks to get a better mobile experience, according to Sinch’s latest report.

Another important factor which determines how successful financial institutions align with their customers’ expectations is by keeping their information secure. Security plays a major role, so make you sure take all necessary measures to make customers feel like their accounts are safe.

5.     Create value for everyone

Financial service companies often create value for their customers by improving their communications and CX processes.

Imagine a successful omnichannel experience across all channels and consistency in messaging. These two factors put customers’ minds at ease.

Exceptional customer experiences for financial services include:

• Offering competitive interest rates
• Providing high-quality customer service
• Offering convenient services such as mobile deposits, bill pay, mobile banking
• Creating loyalty programs

Create the Best Customer Experience in Financial Services

We’ve established how vital customer experience in financial services is and how it requires a detailed strategy to make sure everything is covered.

Partner with VoiceSage and let us help you build interactive and engaging customer experiences in your financial services company.

If you want to increase engagement, improve collection rates, or enhance your overall customer touchpoints, get in touch with one of our CX experts today.