By Hannah Wren, Content
Marketing Associate Published February 18, 2020 Last modified February 18, 2020
The emergence of bots, AI, and interactivity
in messaging has transformed channels like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and
iMessage from places we chat to platforms where we do business. Conversational
business is only going in one direction—Gartner estimates that “by 2022, 70% of
all customer interactions will involve emerging tools like chatbots, machine
learning, and mobile messaging, up from 15% in 2018.”1
While the financial industry has
previously been a slower contestant in the digital transformation race, fintech
companies are on the rise and changing the competition. They’re taking a bite
of the conversational business cake and eating it too, creating fast,
personalized, and secure messaging experiences that
go beyond meeting customers where they are. And, traditional banks are catching
on.
Here are five reasons why conversational
customer experiences pay off for financial services.
1. The promise of a better digital experience
Customers are used to easy digital experiences
in all areas of their lives and the standard is no different for financial
services. However, online banking often falls short: only 44 percent of online
customers and 34 percent of mobile customers reported that their online banking
service is easy to use, according to a study by Bain
& Company.
Many of the major tech companies are using
traditional banks’ shortcomings as an opportunity to push into finance with new
and improved digital offerings—from Apple’s credit card to Amazon’s small business loans to Google’s plans for a smart
checking account—and consumers are eager to try them. “When we probe
the top reasons why these consumers are willing to bank with tech providers,
the 'promise of a better digital experience' ranks as the number-two
factor,” states 451 Research.
With over 61 percent of
consumers reporting that messaging is the easiest, most convenient way to
contact a business, many digital-first financial services are putting their
money where their messaging is to attract the next generation of customers and
deliver on that promise of a better digital experience. And the pressure is on
traditional financial companies to follow their lead, or their customers will
change services on a dime.
For example, with Google Pay, users can send
money to contacts using the payment method of their choice as well as claim
money sent to them and transfer it directly to their debit card account all
through an iMessage or
a SMS experience. Facebook rolled
out a similarly seamless experience in the U.S., enabling users to send and
transfer money within Messenger.
Or, Venmo, whose mobile payment experience is
so easy that millennials rarely
carry cash because of it, also now lets users request payments via iMessage as
well as message for help within its mobile app. Similarly, Apple Card rolled out 24/7 text message support
that’s as simple as it sounds: “Have a question? Just text,” says Apple.
2. Next-generation self-service
Many finance and insurance businesses have
embraced virtual assistants for everything from lead generation to customer
support. Among the latter, self-service is
one area where this trend stands out. Self-service is important now more than
ever, as consumers move from bank branches to 24/7 account access. Chatbots help
financial services keep up, enabling fast answers and always-on support.
Bots for banking support are evolving from
live chat machines to human-like messaging agents. In contrast to live chat, messaging is asynchronous.
This enables customers to begin and end the conversation at their convenience,
which is one reason why messaging has the highest satisfaction rating of any
channel, with a CSAT of 98 percent.
Bank of America’s Erica, which reached one million users in 2 months,
is a prime example. Customers can message her to replace lost cards, dispute
charges, and get weekly snapshots of their monthly spending, among other things. They can also communicate with her
through voice for improved accessibility.
Or, with Wells Fargo’s Facebook
Messenger bot, customers can get directions to the nearest ATM and
with Capital One’s Eno,
they can pay credit card bills over text message. And these bots pay off when
it comes to enabling self-service for routine tasks—in one study banking
customers gave a 20-point higher average Net Promoter Score to routine activities
performed online over those accomplished over the phone or in-person.
3. Actionable, proactive support
With proactive messaging
support, companies can anticipate customer needs before they arise. For
example, a bank might enable messaging on its website to help with lead
generation as processes like applying for a loan often require a long,
multi-step web form. Embedding a messaging pop up allows potential customers to
ask questions before they get stuck, lowering the chances they’ll give up and
abandon the form.
What’s important about proactive messaging
experiences is that they’re actionable. For instance, Robinhood is rolling out
messaging to proactively communicate actionable updates to
users about their holdings, such as stocks, options, and crypto purchases or
sales. Similarly, banks are using messaging to proactively notify customers of
suspicious charges, when it’s almost time to pay a bill, or if an account
balance is running low. What makes these notifications actionable is that
customers can act on them within the thread, for instance, by confirming that
they made a flagged charge or asking to pause their card if they didn’t.
Conversational business is a two-way street. Outbound messages are
proactive, but most of the time, they aren’t conversational. Financial
companies must be prepared for customers to respond to their notifications.
This requires a connective layer of tissue that unifies messages
from every channel into a single conversation so that agents are armed with
context that allows them to know what outbound message the
customer is responding to as well as relevant background information
on that customer, like their name, email, and account type. Without access to
that crucial context, agents are completely in the dark, and fast and personal
responses are next to impossible. Additionally, features such as WhatsApp’s Verified Business Profiles add
credibility on third-party messaging channels because customers know who the
notification is coming from.
4. Secure omnichannel experiences
Another benefit to messaging being sessionless
is that customers can continue the conversation across channels—omnichannel
support enables a three times faster ticket resolution time. Seamlessly
switching between public and private channels is particularly important for
financial services since they deal with sensitive information. For instance, a
customer might reach out through a public channel like Facebook, for
convenience. If an agent needs to reference sensitive information, they can
transfer the customer to the company's own secure app or web chat, or an encrypted messaging channel like WhatsApp.
Truly omnichannel banking experiences
seamlessly hand-off conversations between bots and humans as well between channels.
That’s because different financial conversations require a different blend of
digital and human processes, according to Bain & Company:
customers tend to prefer bots for routine financial inquiries, but often want
to speak with a human for higher-stakes concerns. With role-based messaging
permissions, financial companies can connect a customer to the right person and
help ensure only the right person has
access to that customer’s information.
Whether a customer is transferring between a
bot and a human or between channels, it’s always a bad experience when they
have to repeat themselves. That's why banks will need that same connective
layer of tissue to prepare them with context and conversation
history.
5. A more human experience
70 percent of consumers consider their
relationship with their bank to be transactional, rather than relationship-driven, according to Accenture.
What’s more, is that 40 percent would
be more loyal to their bank for a better personalized experience.
Messaging in itself is more personal than
other channels as it places a company next to a customer’s friends and family.
That’s why many fintech companies are using messaging to provide personalized
financial advice. Take Cleo, a sassy bot that makes budgeting easy, and even
fun. Ask her to roast you and she’ll use GIFs of Cersei Lannister to teach you
how to budget better. Similarly, Plum a Facebook
Messenger bot, also available on the Plum app, sends users personalized savings
advice, using emojis for
encouragement along the way.
With messaging, customer conversations are
also more abundant, more complete, and available in one central place. Again,
having a complete view of the customer is imperative to a
personalized messaging experience as it gives businesses the necessary context
for more intimate interactions, such as how long a customer has been with the
company, their order history, or why they last reached out as well as provides
a way for companies to manage this data. Companies can use the conversational
data customers voluntarily share, of course keeping privacy and compliance in
mind, to amplify the voice of the
customer by drawing insights that create better personalized
experiences.
1Gartner, Magic
Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center, Brian Manusama, Nadine
LeBlanc, Simon Harrison, 11 June 2019
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