Solutions for the Financial Industry. The financial industry is experiencing unprecedented changes and faces new challenges in recent years, mainly in areas of customer communication and digital transformation. A significant factor on the financial industry is the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced entire countries into lockdown and made their civilians spend a lot more time at home. As a result, financial organizations such as banks, insurance companies, credit unions, and others, experienced growing demand for online financial services, and with this growing demand, new challenges emerged.
Technology and Customers in the Financial Industry
To understand which challenges the financial industry face today, we need to look back at recent years’ technological developments and customer habits.
AI Technology is rapidly developing and is used to automate business processes and switch a significant amount of the human workforce to machines. These artificial intelligence capabilities are changing the financial industry’s structure from within.
Customer habits are also changing. In recent years, technological developments have increased consumer’s use of digital devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops, which caused a shift in consumer habits and created new standards for customer communication. For example, 90% of consumers nowadays, expect companies to have an online portal for customer service.
Technology impacts how financial organizations operate and the ways they choose to engage their customers, so understanding them is imperative for every financial service provider. We’ll discuss the main challenges for service providers in the financial industry, and proven ways to overcome them.
Top 5 Customer Communication Challenges in the Financial Industry
1. Growing Demand for Online Financial Services
Financial service consumers are much more demanding than ordinary consumers, one possible reason is the scale of their investment. Financial service consumers might entrust a bank with their entire fortune, and therefore have much higher expectations as customers. Those Customers expect every financial organization to be digital, accessible, and easy to use anytime and anywhere.
Customers expect to receive service through multiple digital channels they usually use like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Chat, e-mail, and more. According to a McKinsey report, 71% of clients prefer multichannel interaction, and 25% desire a fully digitally enabled private banking journey with remote human assistance when needed. A new study also finds that the total number of people who use digital banking systems will reach 3.6 billion in 2024 — a dramatic increase (54%) from 2.4 billion in 2020.
Rising customer expectations presents a new challenge for the financial industry in which companies must provide multi-channel digital communication and a unified customer experience.
To overcome this challenge, financial companies need to go through a digital transformation process that will improve their ways of communication with their customers.
We recently published a free guide that dives deep into this subject:
Financial organizations take this matter very seriously. A report “Innovation in Retail Banking” shows that 75% of financial organizations name digital banking transformation as their top priority for 2021, followed by customer experience improvements (51%).
2. Long Wait and Slow Service Delivery
Another significant challenge in the digital age is in matters of responsiveness and availability. In the past, customers accepted service hours, but nowadays, customers expect 24/7 service and immediate response and care. For example, More than half of consumers expect a response from customer service within an hour, even on weekends.
Providing 24/7 customer service dramatically increases costs and spend for every organization. To avoid these costs, financial organizations must implement an AI-based customer service platform that can use service chatbots to solve most issues without the need for human intervention. According to the Economist, 37% of financial providers use AI to reduce operational costs and improve customer service. The ones who don’t risk losing clients. Research suggests that almost 9 of every 10 customers (89%) will move to another bank based on the customer service provided.
AI service bots can also resolve the slow service delivery and responsiveness issue by immediately replying to every initial request and engaging with customers from the very first moment. This capability ensures higher customer satisfaction and a unique customer experience.
3. Remote Support and Fast Problem-Solving
Nowadays, customers expect financial organizations to provide solutions to almost any issue that can be resolved over a phone call or a physical meeting. For today’s clients, there’s no more waiting for technical teams or spending time on physical meetings, they demand an immediate answer.
In some cases, customer issues require remote human intervention, especially in financial matters.
To solve this issue, every financial organization should use video chat & voice call features, provide remote support and solve complex issues without having to spend precious time and money.
4. Security and Privacy
Remote services require customers to share private information without any physical or voice interaction. over the years, customers got used to trusting financial service providers with their personal information such as their ID, credit card details, photos, addresses, and more, but with this trust comes great responsibility.
As they trust, customers expect their personal information to be kept confidential. A small breach in a bank or an insurance company system can cause tremendous damage if it’s hacked and ruin years of reputation.
This issue requires every company, and especially financial ones, to have the most secure systems, that can withstand every cyber-attack and keep their clients’ privacy. The way to ensure system security is to secure not only your database but also your customer service with a secured customer service software of the highest standards, which is also GDPR-compliant.
5. Culture and Transparency
In a world where customers share personal data with financial service provides, they expect a bank or insurance company to be transparent about how they use the information to make sure it’s not used for malicious purposes.
An “open-door” kind of company that owns a clear transparency policy is perceived as much more reliable and trustworthy than companies that don’t. To solve this issue, every financial company should have a well-planned transparency policy that will be presented as a part of its customer journey.
Overcome Digital Transformation Challenges Using Commbox Smart Customer Communication Platform
The Financial sector’s challenges as presented above require an all-in-one solution, a software that can manage customer communication effectively through every digital channel while maintaining the highest security standards.
Meet Commbox – an omnichannel communication platform that enhances customer experience and leads digital service, support, and sales teams to success.
Commbox helps organizations improve their customer communication by using advanced AI-based technology that engages with customers and solves issues more efficiently than ever with a smart inbox implemented in a customer communication platform.
One popular solution Commbox offers is the WhatsApp API service bot that engages with customers through their app and can do so on many other digital platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and more. Commbox holds the highest security standards and owns GDPR compliance.
Commbox’s solution successfully transformed large financial companies such as The Phoenix, Clal, AIG, Discount Bank, and others by implementing digital solutions that improved customer communication and customer experience.
How Commbox transforms Customer Communication in Financial Organizations
AIG – a global insurance and finance company and one of the largest in Israel, implemented Commbox and achieved a nearly 500% increase in customer digital interactions!
Also, 17% of AIG’s first-time customer requests were solved by Commbox’s chatbot. For another large finance & insurance company – Clal, Commbox’s chatbot solved 57% of issues without any human intervention.
5 Reasons Why Commbox is the Solution For Your Financial Business
- All-in-one omnichannel customer communication solution.
- WhatsApp API smart bots that provide friendly and effective service.
- AI and automation features that improve customer experience.
- GDPR security compliance.
- Proven success in managing financial companies’ customer service.
In Conclusion
2021 marks a new era for the financial industry. As customers expect financial services to become more digital and multichannel, organizations must upgrade their customer service and customer experience or get left behind.
Implementing an omnichannel, AI-based, and secured customer communication solution, is imperative for every financial company, now more than ever.
About Commbox
Commbox offers an innovative solution for customer interactions, creating a holistic customer communication experience. By using the Commbox platform, companies and enterprises can automate recurring tasks that are excessively time-consuming, allowing your agents to focus on more important tasks. Commbox paves the way for autonomous business communication, without losing the quintessential human touch.
Commbox’s mission is to pave the way for companies worldwide to become autonomous enterprises, without losing their quintessential human touch.
