The banking industry has undergone a drastic digital transformation in the last few years. Now the banks are bridging the gap between online and offline services by opting for the omnichannel approach. As the omnichannel banking system offers simplicity, innovation and ease to the banks that allow them to influence customer behaviour.
Moreover, customers are also using digital banking channels such as internet banking and mobile banking. Thus, the demand for comfortable banking services has increased. And the best solution to this is to implement an omnichannel banking solution in your organisation.
In this blog, we will discuss with you in detail the omnichannel banking solution with its benefits. Also, we will show you the challenges you have to face while using omnichannel banking in your business.
What does omnichannel banking mean?
Omnichannel banking is a collection of services offered by banks to customers that can be used across both online and offline channels. For instance, if a customer has started a transaction at a bank and kept it incomplete. Then he does not need to go to the bank again to complete the transaction. He can complete the remaining part of the transaction over the smartphone.
However, omnichannel banking is not just limited to banking services, it also provides users with several facilities for doing back-office operations. Apart from this, the omnichannel mobile banking system plays an essential role in enhancing customer retention rate, simplifying the customer onboarding process and restructuring the marketing process.
Challenges with omnichannel banking
Omnichannel is undoubtedly the sure-shot way of success for the bank but still many banks are hesitant in its adoption. It’s because the banks would need a vast technological infrastructure to go omnichannel. However, implementing the data structure is not an easy thing, it also brings some challenges with it that may cause banks to lose their customers. Here are the challenges that you may face while adopting omnichannel banking:
1. Slower adoption
Slower adoption is one of the main challenges in omnichannel banking. The reason for this is the higher reliance on digital tools that can result in a frustrating experience for the customer. Also, some of the customers still prefer traditional methods of banking as they are unwilling to accept the omnichannel banking modes or they do not have enough awareness about their usage.
Moreover, there is no personal interaction in omnichannel banking. So the banks would miss the opportunity to create personalised relations with the customers.
2. Technological redesign
When a business is going to omnichannel, it has to make drastic changes in its technical structure to keep pace with changing market needs. For this, it needs enhanced data capabilities and a proper technological infrastructure.
Moreover, in an omnichannel method of banking, the bank needs to track each of their transactions to understand the customers’ journey to facilitate the data transfer among them. So the combinations of the customer, channel, product and customer journey can be stored and retrieved in real-time.
So if you want to stay in the market then you have to adopt the trending technologies for your business.
3. Shift in culture
The sudden technological shifts in the business world are one of the crucial challenges of adopting omnichannel banking. This increased expectations of customers have brought a sudden shift in the culture of the finance industry. Nowadays, customers are expecting easier and faster access to banking services from anywhere, at any time and over any device.
However, meeting customer expectations requires a well planned omnichannel strategy. For this, banks have to observe their channels that are being used by the customers. By doing this, banks can know about customer preferences and can use this information to make better business strategies.
Benefits of omnichannel banking
Omnichannel banking is all about the integration of better tools as it keeps the bank on the top of the game by enabling them to deal better with the clients. And for this, banks have to integrate an omnichannel banking platform. This platform offers banks with the ability to switch through multiple channels.
This means that banks can personalise their relations with the customers along with offering cutting edge banking services. But the benefit of omnichannel banking is not limited to this. Also, there are several other benefits offered by the omnichannel banking system which are as follows:
1. Real-time data synchronisation
In the omnichannel banking method, a customer can start a transaction from one platform and can complete it over some other platform. For example, if a customer wants to deposit money then he can fill the pay-in-slip with the banking app or by using the website of the bank. Then the customer gets an auto-generated code on his phone. The bank official will deposit the amount to the customer’s account after verifying that code.
So by doing the above process, banks can save the time of their customer as they do not have to go to the bank and the banks do not have to maintain paper-based pay-in slips.
2. Remote onboarding and KYC
Customer onboarding and KYC verification are essential things to open a bank account. In omnichannel banking, both of these processes can be easily done remotely.
Now the customer can start the onboarding process by uploading all the important documents online. Then all its information gets collected and submitted for verification to meet the regulatory requirements. Apart from this, KYC verification also reduces the duplication of efforts and enhances the customer journey.
3. Support for sales teams
Along with using omnichannel banking for offering better customer services, banks should also focus on personalizing their digital channels. And this can become possible only if the banks would focus on increasing their sales. For this, banks should update their customer relationship manager with all the real-time information of customer dealings.
Also, banks can make successful human interactions by offering enough sales capabilities to their staff. That is why many banks have started investing in digital learning systems to train their sales teams. Moreover, banks can also align the incentives with the customer needs to reduce the risk of mis-selling.
Conclusion
The innovations in the FinTech world had forced the traditional banks to go digital. Due to which banks have started searching for digital channels using which they can provide better services to the customers. This has created a need for a robust omnichannel banking platform that can start onboarding from one channel and then seamlessly switch to the other without losing the process.
Making a feature-rich omnichannel banking platform is the best decision for banks to offer a top-notch customer experience. In the coming years, we would surely witness retail banks revamping their omnichannel infrastructure to compete with the FinTech enterprises.
