Creating a Well-designed Digital Banking Customer Experience

The move to digital banking is accelerating. Avaya’s Life and Work Beyond research shows that nearly 40% of U.S. customers are doing more of their banking by app, and 35% use their smartphones more often to make payments.

Customers’ communication preferences are also changing. Our research found that 56% of customers want to use a mix of channels, while 21% prefer digital tools and apps and 16% prefer to interact with banks in-person at a branch.

After the mass disruption of COVID-19, the challenge now is to ensure banks have visibility of the entire customer journey to complete a truly seamless experience for customers. With branches representing up to 30% of total operational costs, a well-designed digital customer journey that embraces the branch also offers significant cost savings potential.

Here’s what banks need to consider…

A Well-Designed Mobile App Experience

A recent survey from Cornerstone Advisors found that the number of Americans who considered a digital bank to be their primary bank increased by 67%. As traditional banks compete with fully digital alternatives like Ally Bank and Chime, a well-designed mobile app is imperative for keeping digitally inclined customers satisfied. The goal is to make the mobile app part of a seamless, end-to-end customer experience that minimizes friction and adds user value. Our research identified several opportunities for improvement. For example, 63% of customers agreed there is often not enough help available on mobile banking apps, and 80% believe there should be an easy-to-find phone number on mobile apps.

Supporting Existing Customers Through Traditional Channels

Banks need to offer a seamless, engaging, and personalized experience across both digital and traditional channels. Simple tasks like balance look-up and password resets can be automated using digital tools, but these “simple” transactions aren’t straightforward for everyone — especially customers who are older or less technologically able. The experts Avaya interviewed agreed that improvements are needed.

For example, instead of forcing callers to use an automated solution by default (“Welcome to XYZ Bank! Press 1 for XX, press 2 for YY”), banks can implement a virtual agent that greets callers with a confirmation that their place in the queue is secure, then asks them if they’d like to use an automated solution while they wait (“Welcome to XYZ Bank! Your place in line is secure. Would you like to engage with our virtual assistant while you wait? Your place in line will remain secure, and you can leave the virtual assistant experience at any time”). Autonomy is prioritized, which may incentivize traditional customers to use automated self-service on their terms, and banks can reduce costs while keeping agents free to handle more complicated issues.

Identity Verification Across Digital Channels

As more customers interact using digital channels like video chat, text messaging, and mobile apps across different connected devices, banks need a stronger method of identity authentication to ensure data protection and compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations. This needs to be done without adding customer friction to ensure a seamless, well-designed digital customer journey. Biometric-based, identity-centered security has emerged as a solution.

By leveraging the sensors on the connected devices customers use for interacting and transacting (like their smartphone, tablet, and laptop), companies can apply advanced verification techniques like encrypted 3D face mapping to authenticate faster and with far greater accuracy — all in a seamless way that saves time and doesn’t obstruct the customer experience. Older authentication methods like KBA no longer cut it, especially in the highly sensitive, at-risk financial services industry. You can learn more about how Avaya is working with leaders in identity-centered security.

A Well-Designed Desktop Experience for Agents

Agents can’t achieve the level of customer excellence that’s expected of them (especially as interactions grow increasingly complex in nature) if they have clunky, outdated tools that don’t allow them to efficiently communicate or gain the right insights when they’re needed. Agents should have everything they need to do their job well, all in one place. An intuitive, composable, browser-based desktop enables banking agents and employees to handle multiple customer interactions simultaneously across channels and receive relevant data from multiple sources, including CRM and business systems, in a consolidated view.

Get the Very Best Outcomes from Your Interactions

Customers want real connections with their banks. Creating a well-designed digital customer journey — and having a single, AI-powered view of that journey — helps banks get the very best outcomes from their interactions while creating more seamless customer and employee experiences that meet desired objectives. 

Learn more about the key elements banks should consider to digitally evolve with Avaya’s latest research. View the full report, Five Recent Trends Shaping the Banking Industry.