Research Outline

Digital Banking Relationships

Goals

To determine what steps banks can take to maintain a personal relationship with customers while still offering the digital banking components their customers demand. The focus for this research should be on the North American region.

Early Findings

Provide Personalized Experiences

  • Survey data has shown that 80% of consumers are "more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences."
  • However, many consumers are protective of their personal information and therefore banks should be careful in the methods they use to personalize experiences for consumers. In fact, 25% of consumers "see getting personalized offers as creepy" and 32% feel that giving away their privacy is not worth personalized experiences.
  • In providing personalized experiences, it seems that banks would do well to make it clear to their customers how their personal information is used and how the company protects their private information, as 36% of consumers feel that "companies don't do enough to protect their private information."

Get to Know the Customer's Current Financial Situation

  • The vast majority of organizations think its very important to know their customers.
  • However, most consumers believe that their bank doesn't know important aspects of their personal financial situation.
  • Logically, understanding more about a customer's unique financial situation can allow baking firms to provide more real-time, customized guidance. While providing real-time guidance is an advantage that digital banks have, 80% of banks overall recognize this as being very important. However, currently, only 34% of banks surveyed have the ability to actually provide this personalized level of guidance digitally. The majority only provide some basic types of personalization.

Provide a Face-to-Face Experience in the Digital Realm

  • Insights from Harvard Business Review have found that face-to-face interactions are significantly more successful than non-face-to-face interactions.
  • While providing live phone support is one way to mimic face-to-face interaction, real-time video is seen as a more authentic way to re-introducing this human touch within a digital environment.
  • BluCurrent Credit Union in Missouri is one such bank that has implemented real-time video to "ensure members can connect with a subject matter experts". This effort has increased the credit unions cross sales rate by 20%.