In terms of digital transformation, the best banks in the world are lagging far behind their competitors. The difference between best in class and industry average is huge. It so happens that Polish banks are in the lead in the "Digital Sales Diagnostic" report prepared by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and presented by Michał Panowicz at the 47th EFMA Congress 2019 in Paris.
What can banks do if they want to chase the lead and want to win more and more loyal customers? There can only be one answer after this congress: it's time for the banks to stop selling products! Yes, it is. So what should banks sell? The extraordinary customer experience.
"We need to focus on customers, not on the products."
Lisa Frazier, in saying these words, only confirmed our insights from the EFMA Innovation Summit that took place a few days earlier. In the next part of her lecture Lisa Frazier emphasized that "disruption is not about only digital transformation, it's about transforming many parts of what we do". Ian Ormerod agreed with her when he said "innovation it's about use-case, not the technology" citing the Apple brand and the way in which this global company sells its products.
What does this mean for banking?
Geert van Mol, an enthusiast of modern technology in banking, explained it effectively. He even described himself as a maniac of mobile-first customer experience. On the example of his bank he showed how mobile banking should look like and how to apply for new products in it. He referred to the fact that bankers have to stop creating long, illegible and unattractive application forms. This rejects customers. Clients are willing to buy for it if the bank provides a short, intuitive and engaging mobile path, because their experiences will then become similar to those of a "rock star performing on the big stage".
How to create extraordinary customer experiences so that customers can buy from your bank?
- Create a true omnichannel where customers can interrupt the process on one device and return to it on another.
- Simplify all sales processes so that customers can run them quickly, efficiently and easily
- Provide your customers with self-service in electronic and mobile channels, so that they can make almost every order with just a few clicks.
- Continuously study and monitor customer behavior in online sales processes to change, simplify and eliminate bottlenecks
That's the truth. Soon we will publish an article about how to sell customer experience in banks. Today, however, we can say that all the above mentioned points are confirmed by research available on the market, and also confirmed by the success-story of our customers.
- If you do not provide 100% of online sales processes, 28% of people will abandon them. (Signicat)
- If you complicate it too much, 77% of people will prefer to go to the branch instead of doing it online. But what control do you have over whether they will actually reach these branches? (Signicat)
- mBank, thanks to ongoing monitoring of sales processes, decided to change a few steps (e.g. resigned from offering a few debit cards to customers when applying for new account and changed this option to offering a just one standard card), and increased its conversion by 2 percentage points. (Case Study)
mBank listed and appreciated in Paris
It was very nice for us to listen to Geert van Mol's presentation, because although he works in a highly digitalized bank, during the speech he was still delighted with the Customer Experience level generated by mBank. Geert van Mol was proud on stage that his bank was already at such a level of Customer Experience digitalization that he could easily start comparing his bank to mBank. We, on the other hand, are proud to have been supporting mBank in its sales processes for years, which delight their customers. Read the case study of mBank.
Read also the summary of:
