Banks offer many more services, along with charging a lot more fees, than a generation ago. As virtual services grow, trust levels continue to decline. Only 32 percent of Americans trust their bank “a great deal” or “quite a lot,” according to Gallup’s 2017 polling.
Financier Worldwide looks at personalization, GDPR (learn it, know it), and the impact of social media on banking relationships from the Customer Experience (CX) perspective. However, the customer relationship all comes down to trust, which requires human interaction.
“An overwhelming majority of customers consider their banking relationship merely transactional and are seeking better experiences from banks,” suggests Fabrice Albizzati, a partner in EY’s FS advisory practice. “Customers are looking for service providers that know them, that they can trust and, in turn, stay loyal to. FS institutions, therefore, need to optimise CX and implement a more personalised approach to recapture customer loyalty.”
Notice that customers want the bank to “know them.” Instead, banking and financial service offers bombard the consumer today, by direct mail, email, and SMS. Most of these offers are fishing for potential customers rather than providing targeted services that build trust. They scream indifference to the customer’s daily challenges. The cost to banks is a constant low-yield search for more customers, many of whom trade off between offers over time instead of settling into a relationship and increasing share of wallet with the bank.
No matter how many technologies we invent, the person-to-person relationship cannot be replaced by pure digital interaction. “Recapturing customer loyalty” is a project that involves the right human interaction blended with digital services to create a sense that the financial company values the customer’s trust and money. Send people to meet people at the right time. Deliver great service and savings to banking customers, and be ready to demonstrate that value in-person, combining listening and empathy with data insights.
People will use technology to reweave trust. It’s a process we are many years into with diminishing returns on technical investments alone. Now, it’s time to help connect in order to rebuild trusting relationships.