How financial services institutions can optimize the adoption of digital transactional communications
Financial services institutions (FSI) send a lot of transactional communications to their customers. While certain documents and reports are mandated by regulations, others are required to keep customers informed. These communications are not only necessary, but also an important contributor to the overall customer experience (CX), when done right. When communications aren’t designed with customer experience as a priority, the outcome is complex, customer unfriendly documents/reports.
Transactional communications in financial institutions need to be proactively managed, which means aligning them across channels and departments, to ensure the customer experience is seamless, frictionless and above all, meets the customer’s needs immediately.
There are several tactics that credit unions, banks, wealth managers and insurance providers can employ to optimize the adoption of digital transactional communications.
Here are the top 5 success criteria for digital adoption of transactional communication in financial services (identified by Keypoint Intelligence, 2021):
#5 – Educating customers on the benefits of going digital
Customers that have avoided digital communications to date are not going to be easy to convince. If they weren’t open to digital processes before the pandemic and still hesitated when digital channels were the only option, it’s clearly going to be a tough sell.
Non-adopters might be concerned about a range of different issues, such as online security, their own user abilities and letting go of familiar ways of engagement.
To reach customers who prefer the status quo and do not see the benefit of making the switch, financial institutions need to understand their concerns and develop educational campaigns to address those fears, without pushing so hard that they alienate these customers.
#4 – Making it easy for customers to switch
Switching to digital communications needs to be an easy, straightforward process, without fuss, friction or too much paperwork. If it isn’t simple, customers will not do it. According to research, credit unions that have been successful in meeting their adoption targets found ease of switching to be one of the top reasons for their success.
Interestingly, making the decision to switch an easy one shouldn’t mean imposing penalties on those that don’t make the move to digital. For example, charging a fee to receive print communications in the mail is not seen as a success criterion to getting customers to switch. Charging a fee for print documents scored lowest when measured across all the financial services respondents.
#3 – Security and privacy concerns
Not surprisingly, all the financial institutions viewed their ability to meet security and privacy concerns as key to their success. Consumers nowadays are generally more aware of security and privacy risks, therefore the sceptics need to receive constant and consistent messaging on this topic. So, part of the task of educating customers on the benefits of digital is explaining what the bank or credit union is doing to keep customers’ or members’ information safe.
Another part is helping customers understand what constitutes risky behavior, and how to avoid placing their personal or financial information at risk of exposure. The bank or credit union should endeavor to assist customers or members to secure their personal data throughout the information lifecycle, even when a personal document is saved on the consumer’s personal devices.
#2 – Having an effective multichannel marketing strategy
Today’s customers want the ability to select the channel through which they receive marketing and other information from their financial services provider. A single channel strategy assumes all customers are alike, which is not the case.
A multichannel marketing strategy meets the customer where they prefer to operate, providing a higher likelihood that they will open and consume the information received. Interestingly, credit union respondents did not see a multichannel strategy as a tactic for successful digital adoption, meaning this is potentially an untapped opportunity for credit unions to encourage members to adopt digital communication.
#1 – Offering a better customer experience on digital
The number one driver of success for banks, insurance providers and wealth managers that are meeting their paperless targets is providing a better customer experience.
For most wealth management firms, the clients that are naturally drawn to digital options have already migrated all or a portion of their transactional communications to paperless. These customers don’t need to be educated on the benefits of digital, but they may need additional motivation to switch their remaining communications.
Providing a better customer experience is critical to motivating adoption, and the way to achieve this is to design transactional communications with the customer at the core of all decisions. Paying attention to what customers want to see first and foremost on transactional communications is the difference between a complex, customer-unfriendly document and one that meets the customer’s requirements immediately.
How Doxim helps to optimize digital adoption of transactional communication in financial services
At Doxim, we understand the unique requirements of the finance sector and can advise on how to digitally transform transactional communications to optimize the customer experience. Our communication specialists are experienced in digital adoption processes that simplify the switch and encourage customers to go paperless. Our omnichannel CCM platform offers multiple channels, allowing customers to select their preferred communication channel/s.
