File photo The coronavirus pandemic is hastening the drive towards robust and hassle-free digital financial services.
As banks speed up the deployment of digital technologies and products in response to this new normal in banking, keeping the customer well-served to maintain their loyalty is vital for competitive success.
Although the benefits of digital technologies, in terms of speed, convenience, and security, mean that banks can provide enhanced customer service, consumer expectations are also likely to rise as they experience and get used to the new forms of satisfaction brought about by digital technologies.
“Expectations are always prone to change. If pre-Covid, there was a certain normal for the customer, what Covid and the rapid digitisation has done is to now make the thing the customer didn’t previously expect the new normal they want to enjoy every day,” says J.N Halm, a service consultant.
“Customer expectations will continue to grow; very soon customers will be asking: ‘If you can do A, why can’t you do B?’ So in terms of expectations, banks should anticipate that their customers’ expectations are going to change—and as these expectations change, the banks better be ahead of the curve,” he adds.
Just as a stone-faced receptionist or teller in a bank branch is a turn-off for many a customer, a mobile banking application that malfunctions repeatedly causes disappointment and frustration, leading to customer dissatisfaction which impinges on a bank’s service reputation.
Philip Owiredu, Managing Director of Cal Bank, says ensuring that digital banking platforms are stable by investing in robust infrastructure is critical to satisfying clients’ needs.
Meeting customers’ expectations also requires banks to maintain some level of physical interactions with them, even as self-service digital banking becomes the norm. “If we find ourselves over-digitalised, we will find ourselves disadvantaged, because the human touch is always needed,” says Halm.
He adds pointedly: “ATMs will not be sympathetic to the customer, as the frontliner of the bank would. Also, if the customer needs a certain service that is not readily available, he would feel better with that response coming from a human or a bank’s staff than from a machine.”
Given that banking is more than just payments, person-to-person contact is unavoidable for certain transactions or services, such as negotiating a loan or receiving financial advice to help manage one’s money. Moreover, some customers would simply find it hard to place greater trust in a mobile application, even if they can use it, than the […]
