Simplify the Banking Experience to Earn Customers for Life

In the highly competitive financial services industry, banks must ensure customers enjoy an easy and efficient experience at each journey stage. There’s simply too much risk that poor experiences will tarnish the bank’s reputation, turn away customers, and negatively impact the bottom line.

The way customers communicate and exchange information with banks is central to their experience. In the past, these interactions could lead to dissatisfaction and frustration. Maybe the forms were confusing or complicated to complete. Perhaps the process wasn’t transparent or took an excruciatingly long time. Or maybe customers struggled to contact a bank representative when they needed to talk to a real person.

Today’s communications solutions and technologies empower banks to break down unnecessary walls between their internal processes and customers. With these barriers removed, banks have new freedom to increase transparency, build trust, and foster personal experiences that help them earn customers for life.

Engage in Meaningful Interactions Every Step of the Way

To engage each customer more effectively in the right way at the right time, banks must seamlessly blend digital and human interactions. According to management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, banks that shifted to a more integrated, multimedia approach to customer communications have had convincing results, including:

• Double the number of digital sales to customers
• Three times more success in cross-selling bank services
• A 40% increase in customer activities with the bank

One bank even reduced its cost to serve customers by two-thirds.

Here’s a closer look at how banks can deliver technology-driven banking experiences that streamline and accelerate every step of the customer journey.

Make it Fast and Easy to Navigate the Process

Initiating a new loan application with a bank can be very intimidating for people, especially when it’s their first time making a significant purchase, such as a house. They’re unfamiliar with the bank’s processes or what will be required of them.

When customers can easily set up a new account and apply for a home ownership loan in minutes, it helps alleviate stress. They can save considerable time and effort compared to an in-person visit to the bank.

User-friendly online forms and virtual agents efficiently step customers through the application requirements. The fields in the form are straightforward to complete, and a virtual agent automatically provides information to address questions that may arise during the process proactively. To minimize complexity and further accelerate the process, customers can upload supporting documents such as bank statements and identification documents without leaving the user interface.

Perhaps best of all, customers can complete the entire application process from the comfort and convenience of their own homes, reducing the stress that can come with travel and unfamiliar bank environments.

Connect with Customers their Way

Even with the most intuitive online forms, helpful virtual agents, and proactive communications, customers sometimes need the reassurance and conversational exchanges that a person can best provide. Flexibility and personalization are critical to these exchanges. While AI is fast and helpful, customers want to communicate using their preferred media, which can mean connecting with a human. It’s the customer’s choice about what is most convenient for their schedule, and the technology plays a role in guiding them down the avenue of their choice.

Collaboration applications put personalized text, voice, and video communications with bank agents at customers’ fingertips. A conversation may start with a voice or video call that humanizes the interaction and gives customers access to someone they can rely on for assistance. Those communications can be followed up with text and email messages that provide additional support and links to more information.

Provide Timely Updates and Guidance

As the application moves through the bank’s internal processes, it’s crucial to keep customers informed about its progress and help them take full advantage of technologies that further accelerate the process.

When customers instantly receive text or email notifications confirming their application has passed through each process stage, they feel the bank sees them and values their business. This builds confidence and trust in the relationship. When customers can track the status of their application in real-time through a secure online portal, that confidence and trust are further strengthened.

Providing support and guidance to customers using newer technologies is another essential part of building strong customer relationships. This support can include walking customers through the steps to provide electronic signatures and providing clear, easy-to-follow instructions to access the bank’s secure online portal. These timely and helpful communications increase the likelihood that customers can successfully use advanced technologies without making a trip to the bank or causing a delay in their application.

Deliver Exceptional Banking Services with Mitel

When banks and other financial institutions dramatically simplify their services, they eliminate many of the unknowns and fears around banking processes for their customers.

Mitel takes the same approach when helping its customers choose, deploy, and integrate the communications solutions and technologies needed to deliver exceptional banking services. It’s a key reason banks and financial institutions globally trust Mitel to help make their customer experience vision a reality.

Together with our Mitel Solutions Alliance partners, we provide everything required to deliver the seamless, personalized customer experiences described above, including:

• Contact center solutions that incorporate advanced technologies, such as MiContact Center with Google Cloud Contact Center AI and desktop co-browsing capabilities
• Electronic signature solutions
• Biometrics solutions for secure identity verification
• Multimedia collaboration applications, such as MiCollab
• Professional services to integrate communications solutions with third-party applications banks depend on

Learn more about Mitel solutions for the financial services industry.