Mobile banking apps are the future of financial institutions. Thus, as digitalization proliferates and mobilization dominates the world, traditional banks have started to put in many efforts, and money into building their own digital banking services.
However, as much as many customers find digital channels and mobile banking very convenient, time-efficient and productive, there is still a huge number of customers that will prefer branches over digital banking. When a bank maintains a huge sum of both of these customer types, the effort and money that they can put in one channel will have to be divided, and, the trouble they went through in the first place for developing a digital banking channel can not meet its ends.
So what can banks do to change their customers’ preferences and channel them to their digital channels? Read our article to find out the main reasons why your customers may be resenting using your mobile banking app and the tips that you can apply to overcome them.
Re-evaluate Your Mobile Banking App, Digital Channels and Solutions
First and foremost, the UX and UI design of your mobile app should be appealing and user-friendly. If you have an app that doesn’t work right, doesn’t meet customer satisfaction, or is simply not user-friendly, it will be harder to navigate your customers to your app instead of your branches. For more information read our guide on how to build a banking app.
Here is an example based on a study conducted by TowerGroup in 2010 of how the expenses of handling even the simplest operation can vary widely by channel:
Operation: Transaction
$3.75 for a call agent interaction
$1.34 for a branch transaction
$0.60 for an ATM transaction
$0.14 for a mobile transaction
These numbers alone show us the importance of having a perfect operating banking app and migrating your customers to those digital channels.
Start With What You Have
As mentioned earlier, there is already a group of customers that are willing to use digital channels for the many benefits they provide. This group consists of millennials, individuals that have internationally scaled financial operations, tech-savvy people who are already familiar with many digital developments, students, employees with higher annual household incomes and highly educated customers.
It is important to keep in mind that these people are actually your references. The customer satisfaction you provide them with is crucial, hence appreciating their existence and developing your app and updating it according to their feedback has a lot of importance in channeling new users (customers) to your banking app.
Otherwise, you may find yourself losing your users to other digital banking apps. While presenting these existing customers a good UX, having an efficient CRM that will help you track and migrate the customers with similar demographics (they will be more likely to be willing to shift to online banking) is also very effective in enlarging your customer base that uses your digital channels.
Ease the Transition Process
Customers who prefer traditional banking with branches and ATMs over digital banking may need a further push. Some of these customers even find the personal relationships that they already have insufficient, so they tend to be the hardest ones to migrate.
However, here are some strategies that you can use to encourage your customers to use your digital channels and increase customer retention. Here are the strategies that can be applied to convince and help customers step up their game.
Take baby steps
Most of the customers that are abstaining from using digital channels may need to be introduced to the banking technologies little by little. Customers that come to the branch for transactions and operations that can actually be handled from an ATM even more efficiently can be convinced to use the ATM.
Instead of having a representative finishing the operation from a booth, make them assist the customer at the ATM. Showing how easy the process can actually be (fewer costs and less waiting in queues) and meanwhile promoting your banking app as an even more efficient way of banking (even fewer costs with the comfort of their couch) can help your customers warm up to the idea and lead them to the digital channels.
After you successfully transmit your customer to the banking app, introduce your features and help them navigate through the app. Using short tutorials, step-by-step guides, illustrations, etc. can help new-comers to better understand the UI design and adjust to the app.
Always keep in touch
Some customers need to be in constant contact with a person during financial operations. Having your customers know that they can always contact a representative via a banking app can be the push that they need towards digital banking. Integrating features like click-to-call, click-to-chat and video banking and creating an omnichannel experience can help ease their transition to digital.
Let them know that, unlike branches, they can get 24/7 help with AI or chatbots through the digital channels. Plus, having your customers’ backs when they experience an issue will increase their UX, resulting in customer satisfaction, which will help you in various ways.
In addition, you can benefit from notifications. Sending personalized notifications to your users will make them feel closer and will not only give them a sense of security but will also help build brand loyalty.
Ensure safety
Feeling unsafe is one of the foremost reasons most people can’t rely on technology in financial institutions. They can feel more vulnerable and open to fraud. For this reason, leveraging advanced biometric security systems to increase customers’ comfort will play a big role in migrating them to digital channels.
Banks should also improve usability and functionality and should have a simple design that doesn’t look intimidating to new-comers. The fear of making a mistake in complex designed apps can cause worry among the users and push them to traditional banking.
Show the difference
Mobile banking apps should provide cost-efficiency and convenience. Offer higher interest rates, lower loan rates. As the users start to save money on these operations it will be harder for them to go back to traditional banking, and it will convince the others to at least give digital channels a try.
To Sum Up
Although we’re in a world of constant change, it can sometimes be challenging to change customers’ preferences. However, finding the right angles and solutions to the problem can help overcome the insecurities and second-thoughts that customers can have about digital channels.
The first thing to keep in mind is that if you want to migrate customers to your banking app, you need to be able to offer them the best. ForInvest has many references from reputable companies and banks and offers its services with in-depth technical & financial know-how, perfectly fitting tailor-made solutions and quality-driven continuous development.