From Transactions to Relationships: How to Perfect Omnichannel Customer Experiences

Experience matters in the world of retail banking. Those that can deliver a seamless and consistent omnichannel customer experience report higher recommendation rates, a higher share of deposits, and a greater likelihood of increasing their portfolio of new products and services.

At a time when customers are reexamining their relationships with traditional financial institutions and perceive little difference between banks, the only thing that will set you apart is the quality of your customer experience. But banks also have the dual task of managing the digital experience and the on-site one.  

That’s because, despite the emergence of mobile banking solutions, customers still prefer face-to-face interactions when seeking financial advice on important life decisions, like taking out a loan or mortgage. This represents a unique opportunity for banking leaders like you to reimagine the role of physical branches.

Rather than focusing on transactional interactions, the retail branch can be used to build deeper relationships with customers. It can be a go-to place for customers to engage in consultative services when they've exhausted online research.

Leveraging data in this capacity can be instrumental in crafting hyper-personalized experiences that provide opportunities to increase sales and revenue. This is where a customer journey management solution can help.

What is a customer journey management platform?

A customer journey management platform is an all-in-one solution that makes it possible to orchestrate end-to-end omnichannel customer experiences. It helps you understand, monitor, plan, and manage all customer touchpoints within one dashboard by leveraging solutions like appointment management, on-site and virtual queues, self-check-in kiosks, feedback loops, and more to connect the digital and physical experience.

Because it aggregates data from all interactions into real-time reports and analytics, you’re better able to create personalized experiences based on customers' wants and needs and where they are in their journey. This is a must at a time when differentiation is no longer based on your bank’s location, price, or product offering.

Insights pulled from these reports and the customer journey can be used further to refine the delivery of your bank services and products. Repetitive and manual tasks can be automated, allowing staff to focus on more high-value tasks. Likewise, the solution can be configured to match customers to appropriate representatives based on the nature of their visit.

Since you can create a more comfortable and relaxed in-branch environment, it makes it easier to attract customers, increase sales per customer, and improve conversion rates. More importantly, because transaction times are optimized and repetitive tasks automated, you also reap the benefits of reducing costs and optimizing your staff to better match peak periods — helping you maximize your resources while improving your bottom line.

7 ways to perfect the omnichannel experience with a customer journey management platform

The best customer experiences are the ones you don't notice. They're frictionless and enable you to move from point A to point B without missing a beat. Not only are they easy to navigate, but they're personalized and convenient — ensuring the same seamless experiences across channels, whether they're in person or online.

A customer journey management platform enables you to perfect the omnichannel customer experience by bridging the on-site and digital journey in seven ways:

1. Capturing the customer with appointment booking software: Part of ensuring a seamless transition to your branch is capturing customer data before they’re ready to set foot on-site. Appointment booking software can be leveraged in your mobile app or online to collect all the necessary details of the customer’s visit. In doing so, you can ensure they’re matched to the appropriate staff member.
2. Creating a welcoming experience: Rather than having a customer walk to a teller to check in or use a self-service kiosk, you can create a welcoming environment by having the representative greet the customer at the entrance when they arrive for their appointment. This shows the customer that you value their time and enhances their experience.
3. Reducing transaction times: Improving the efficiency of actual transaction times delivers on customer expectations for fast and convenient service. More importantly, it enables your staff to take care of more customers while also freeing them to spend more time with customers with more complex requests. This goes a long way in delivering better service and reducing walk-aways, driving more sales.
4. Increasing the quality of service: Rather than have customers wait in line to get service, you can ensure they get routed to the right person the minute they walk into the branch. A customer journey management platform enables this by matching the customer request with staff competency. When paired with a virtual queuing system, it removes the need for a physical line as the customer’s place in the queue is secured either with a printed ticket or a virtual one sent to their phone via SMS.
5. Designing better in-person interactions: After being matched, staff can use customer journey analytics to get a 360-degree view of the customer to develop deeper relationships with them. They can look at products they’ve interacted with online, marketing that resonated best with them, and the reason for visiting. In turn, representatives can have a more fruitful conversation that adds value while also enabling them to offer adjacent products based on where the customer is in their journey — increasing sales.
6. Using feedback to orchestrate better experiences: Customer behavior is constantly evolving. One of the best ways to keep a pulse on what customers want and need is through feedback. A customer journey management platform enables you to collect feedback after every interaction. When complied with behavioral data, this makes it easy for you to make iterative changes to the customer experience in real time.
7. Optimizing the customer experience even further: Just as you can leverage behavior data to deepen customer relationships, a customer journey management solution collates benchmarks across regions, branches, sales staff, and more. The goal? To help you further deepen customer relationships by identifying areas of improvement. It makes it possible for managers to be more proactive in improving staff efficiency and reducing wait times.

From transactions to relationships with a customer journey management platform

Today’s savvy customers know that emerging technology, advanced data and analytics capabilities, and expanded communication channels have made it easier than ever to get access to fast, convenient, and personalized banking services and products. One way to ensure that you’re rising to the occasion is by investing in an integrated customer journey management platform.

A customer journey management solution will enable you to deliver on customers' preferences for omnichannel experiences, increase revenue, and reduce costs by improving staff efficiency and productivity. To see how and get a closer look, download your copy of our latest eBook — The Retail Banking Guide to Unlocking More Cross-selling and Upselling Opportunities — to learn more.