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Redefining Customer Experience: FinTech Dominance

Too many companies focus mainly on their website design, functionality, etc. but usually forget about the importance of convenient purchasing or robust payment systems. Some companies are focusing so much on their products; they forget about their customers.

Innovative companies understand the need to provide user-friendly solutions. Consumers' decisions are mostly based on the ease and convenience of using a particular solution, whether it’s a new smartphone or a financial product. When you provide a fast and user-friendly purchasing process, with a seamless checkout, it’s more probable that consumers will choose your brand than one with 6-steps (or more) in the checkout and lots of fields to fill out. Millennials are disappointed with the level of bank services and are less faithful customers. However, at the same time, they are more willing to use new technologies. Banks are failing to adapt to younger customers’ needs and expectations. This is why millennials seek new solutions outside of traditional banks. FinTech companies know that the failures of banks are a massive opportunity for them. There is an excellent opportunity to offer customers what they want - friendly and responsive support, and always be ready to help. It’s all about customer’s trust.

 

Customer Experience

 

Half of the banking customers around the world now use at least one product or service from a FinTech firm, and adoption is particularly at a high level. FinTech prioritized customers as a caterpillar of its business model, and this a well-known truth for all UX and UI designers, who dedicate their efforts to crafting intentional, memorable experiences between real people and their tools. Experiences that give the feeling of trust and honesty are easy to understand for users and are a delight to use.

Creating a great customer experience is more than focusing on just the digital side of our service or product. Even with web-based solutions, a significant part of the magic lies in the off-digital components, e.g., customer support, swift processing of requests, communication via preferred channels, etc. This means that if FinTech wants to create excellent service, it has to leave the box of small web design and apply the best practices of UX to a much broader category of aspects.

It’s the responsibility of the UX designer to plot an elegant, deliberate, natural course for the recipients of the experience being designed. And then take them where you want with as little resistance as possible. Good design is not forceful, vague, selfish, ignorant, or accidental, but intentional. Good design leads to people.

 

User vs. Customer

User experience design is a subset of customer experience design. Users are customers who are engaging with solutions via digital channels. So UX focuses on the experience customers have while using these digital channels. However, the difference between CX and UX is not easy to make. It is often overseen and can lead to the obsolescence of the entire effort invested in the design.

For this reason, if we want to improve the user experience in FinTech, we cannot concentrate only on typical technical features like speed and user-friendliness but need to consider how customer experience in traditional financial services has shaped the perception and expectation of our users. Since financial services relate to one of the most personal spheres in our lives — our financial situation, the most significant value they can create for us is trust. Trust is both an emotional and a logical act, so a digital business solution should be able to invoke it during the entire customer journey, not just the digital parts.

 

A New Standard

 

As today’s consumers have become more reliant on smartphones and mobile devices to accomplish everyday tasks while on-the-go, expectations have shifted to include being able to perform routine banking tasks smoothly from a mobile device, anywhere, and at any time. FinTech is now at the forefront of the financial services industry as a result of the ubiquity of technology and smartphones that are easily accessible to customers, and the numbers don’t lie, 88% of all banking interactions will be mobile by 2022. Although the approaches of traditional financial institutions and disruptive FinTech banking applications certainly differ, they do maintain a similarity: a shared goal of building a relationship with the customer through a strong foundation of communication. While both the old and the new approaches provide solutions to help customers accomplish banking tasks, FinTech applications are taking an entirely new approach to customer communications. Today’s consumers should expect differences in communication options from the two institution types and choose to work with an institution accordingly based on the preferred communication type.

 

Artificial Intelligence

AI power to transform customer communications and the growing preference for self-service in banking should also be top-of-mind for banking executives as they navigate the evolving digital banking landscape. While AI capabilities have long been viewed as futuristic or out of reach for current generations, they’re already making a big splash in the financial services marketplace – with chatbots and predictive analysis as two examples. AI technology in banking is revolutionizing the customer experience by enabling the instantaneous mobile communication that is needed to accomplish routine daily banking tasks from a mobile device, as well as extending the hours of service that a financial organization can offer to its customers. Additionally, organizations are using AI solutions to not only improve the experience of customer interactions but also to detect fraud. Advancements in AI technology are helping to protect customers’ payment card industry (PCI) data while also improving efficiencies in the back-end operation of banks.

 

Self-Service

Self-Service for Satisfied Customers. Along with artificial intelligence as a critical priority for banking, executives should be a significant focus on self-service and payment processing. Mobile accessibility is one of the essential features for 60% of banking customers. As mobile devices have become the standard in communication, consumer desire for self-service options has skyrocketed. For example, ten years ago, customers had to visit a branch location to deposit a check. Today, most banks offer a mobile application that is equipped with remote deposit capabilities. As a result of an explosion of new technology, consumers prefer to accomplish as much of their banking needs through self-service via a mobile app as possible, as opposed to traveling to a branch to visit with a representative.

Customer experience is vitally important to financial service organizations today as consumers have come to expect options for flexible communication and are likely to take their business elsewhere if a bank lacks an experience that meets their digital needs. Whether it’s implementing AI technology to extend hours of service to assist customers or offering self-service options through a mobile application, advancements in technology are revolutionizing the customer experience in the wake of digital transformation.

 

Future: a Symbiotic Relationship

 

Traditional financial institutions have historically played the role of providing a highly service-oriented approach to their customers’ banking needs. While these types of institutions have relied on face-to-face interactions to build and retain relationships. FinTech, on another hand, focuses on the customer first.  FinTech’s are tech-first companies. While they make over the backbone of the banking industry, they can win customers a lot faster. Their core focus is on building a phenomenal end customer experience to be more valuable over the banking layer. Here are critical aspects of the FinTech that makes its legacy:

  • FinTech adoption has nowhere to go but up.
  • FinTechs have made incremental gains and are reaching and engaging a critical mass of bank-first customers.
  • FinTechs are setting new standards for innovation and customer experience. Young consumers are gaining purchasing power, demanding new technologies, and better, faster services. There’s no space for the mistakes and unresponsive customer service. Customers should be put first.
  • The FinTech specialty is to make financial services much simpler and more accessible to customers. They are using data modeling, front-end technology, AI, ML, and old-school customer interactions to understand customer behavior and choices. Consumers should get what they need.

We can forecast significant industry consolidation over the next five years as the smaller banks will not keep pace with the speed of the advancement and thus will cease doing business or be acquired by competitors. The survivors will be well-positioned to buy technology companies that improve the organic development of customer-facing technologies, while steadily enhancing operating efficiencies that are already starting to reshape how banks deliver products. The benefits will trickle down to consumers through faster, more transparent, and secure products and services to shareholders through higher returns on capital and to regulators through leaner, simpler, and more efficient operations. We see the future as a win-win with a symbiotic relationship between FinTech and the banking industry.