In today’s world, with all the digital advancement, customers do not need to physically go to a bank to complete transactions anymore. This is a boon as it saves time and transactions can be completed, bank statements checked, money transferred and more, all with the click of buttons.
Nearly 68% of Canadians use mobile banking on a weekly basis and only 16% are said to actually visit banks. The Canadian banking industry would needs to take appropriate steps to ensure customer needs and demands are met. They would need to adopt digital transformation programs, focusing on mobile app enhancement and development to provide a seamless banking experience.
Source: https://www.greedyrates.ca/blog/need-know-online-banking-canada/
The primary focus of most banks was to create a mobile app of their own just to enter the digital fray and not loose clients. However some banking apps still only allow people to check their balance statements, transaction history and paid bills. For any further transactions, people would need to call the bank and speak to a representative.
This approach may have worked initially, but now the clients demand more from their apps. Banks need to recognize this user saturation as a reality and turn their attention to enhancing the mobile banking experience in order to engage and retain clients.
Given below are a few points on how the app can be enriched for the banks benefit:
Customer Driven App
Mobile and digital services offer banks the opportunity to reduce operational costs but they must be designed and developed keeping in mind the customer’s needs. One of the main reasons people today use banking apps is because it is speedy, efficient and hassle-free. To ensure this, the app needs to be bug free and should have minimum downtime especially while transactions are in process.
The app is mainly being used by a tech-savvy millennial but there are a lot of clients who are 55-years and above, who can benefit from an easy-to-use app. This also attracts new customers who do not wish to deal with complex apps, prefer natural language commands and transparent offerings.
If the mobile app does not simplify the lives of its customers, it would be difficult to survive in the market. For example, a customer does not need to scroll through the entire transaction history, they can simply enter the date or name of the transaction and identify the specific transaction.
Banks needs to realise that they will need to proactively use their apps digital platform, to interact with and engage customers. In order to do so, they will need to know their demographic and accordingly create a mobile banking app which aligns the business goals and customer needs.
Security
Mobile banking is growing rapidly as are the security threats which come with online transactions. Sensitive information is being handled along with a customer’s finances and it is imperative that the data be protected.
Customers rely on the organization and trust their electronic information is safe. In order to do so, documents need to be password protected and data encrypted. Biometric logins, activation and deactivation of credit and debit cards if lost are also a plus point in terms of security.
Personalized and AI Driven Banking
Banking driven by artificial intelligence improves how users experience new streamlined features launched by the bank. Mobile apps offer banks customer specific data and usage patterns, which helps the bank with predictive analysis of the customer’s needs, for instance, bill payment reminders.
Giving personalized offers to customers is crucial as the needs of a college student and that of a retired profession would be different. This information can be leveraged, knowing the customers financial history and what offers would be best suited for them.
Thanks to AI there is now a bigger chance to cater to the individual. This kind of banking also reduces the need for clients to speak to bank representatives as they can self-manage their accounts and carry out actions themselves, which earlier needed bank employee’s assistance. However, the personalized experiences offered also ensure the highest level of customer engagement and satisfaction.
Invest in your Delivery Model
Keeping pace with the changing times and needs of the client is as important as delivering the innovative products to the client in a timely fashion. Innovation would be a slow process in a large organization and changes would take time to go through the necessary approval stages.
Implementing an agile development process would be beneficial in competitive markets where competitors try to poach clients. A continuous delivery model may be difficult to scale but the use of agile coaches and customized approaches have led to successful implementations.
Change is inevitable and adapting to the change while focusing on the customer experience is necessary to ensure they are satisfied and help give the company a competitive advantage.
What Does the Customer Want?
Earlier communications were only via phone conversations or face-to-face exchanges and now the customer’s interaction is with the organizations technology not staff. This means the app needs to be able to deliver and be what the customer needs at any given point.
The world of mobile banking might make the face to face interactions obsolete, but customers still demand assistance, which will help plan their retirement, secure their financial futures and manage money. Providing the clients with tools via the mobile app to actually carry out these functions shows they are looked after as individuals not just statistics.
Apart from the continued focus on adapting and innovating, to offer the clients the best product and services, the app also needs to ensure ease of user experience. Even a millennial would jump ship if they has to deal with extremely complex systems. Around one-third of the leading mobile apps are phasing out the older versions and functions despite new add-ins, in a bid to streamline user experience.
Source: https://www.maparesearch.com/
In conclusion, we can see that the days when banking apps could do as little as show account balances and transactions are over. Over the last decade mobile banking has proved itself to be a vital part of customer-focused banking and research shows that these apps enable customer loyalty while reducing operational costs. Today, a financial marketer’s approach must be centred on consumers and quite simply the mobile banking app must provide a personalized experiences. If you need any further information on improving the mobile app banking experience, you can contact the App Scoop mobile app developers: https://app-scoop.com/contact-us.html
