Dive Brief:
- Banks and finance firms are aiming to improve mobile user experience and boost the return on investment for their mobile investments after mobile-platform adoption spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, customer experience leaders said this week at a conference in Boston.
- Improving user experience flow is a higher priority than incorporating as many bells and whistles as possible, executives said. At Green Dot, for example, simplifying the mobile experience for users is being prioritized over the development of chatbots or automated conversations, said Abhijit Chaudhary, the company’s chief product officer.
- “It’s kind of a game of data right now,” Kriti Anand, vice president of commercial digital product management at Kansas City, Missouri-based Commerce Bank. “Don’t overload them with that information, but give them the authority to actually choose and bifurcate the data that they want and need.”
Dive Insight:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, banks focused on getting customers onto mobile banking platforms as branches shuttered. Now, many are concentrating on delivering the right mix of insights to customers via mobile channels, and using customer data to smooth out pain points, executives said at the Customer Experience for Financial Services conference. That might include improving dropoff rates or pinpointing when inquiries need to be escalated to humans.
Green Dot is working to reduce the number of steps customers must take to carry out mobile banking tasks, Chaudhary said. The company is also studying mobile behavior in an effort to reduce app abandonment rates, and wants to create a smooth transition to human agents when required, Chaudhary added.
Amanda Flashner, chief experience officer at LendingPoint, said enhanced mobile adoption gave rise to expectations that brands should provide insights to customers based on their behavior patterns.
“There's an expectation to communicate what we already know about them back to them,” Flashner said. “We provide them with insights such as ‘Your credit score dropped by 20 points, but this is why.’ It’s not just what type of information that you give them, but it's how you give it to them.”
A challenge with presenting data and insights is offering what’s most relevant to the customer but not overwhelming them, she said.
Indicators of success vary by brand. For some, the priority is not whether customers buy more products but how mobile engagement is improved. Reducing mobile app dropoff points is a key goal at both Green Dot and Commerce Bank, executives said. By contrast, Flashner said LendingPoint sees reduced call center volume as a measure of success.
Some banks with large branch footprints are still working to increase mobile adoption among customers who prefer a human touch. Citizens Bank aims to reduce assisted banking transactions by 50%, said Natalie Higgins, the Providence, Rhode Island-based lender’s senior vice president and director of self-service strategy.
Citizens has been using its branch bankers to help train customers on how to use digital banking platforms, and is looking to simplify the experience where possible, Higgins said. The bank counts 140,000 app downloads linked to in-person interaction with bankers, she said.
“We ultimately want to empower our customers to be digital and utilize [mobile apps] to drive the convenience factor, and then we can focus on providing advice and insights to them for the future,” Higgins said.
