A new crop of digital-only banks like Chime, HMBradley, and N26 are shaking up the financial services sector. However, many fintech startups are still struggling to perfect the customer service side of their businesses.
Digital-only banks have an enormous opportunity to engage their customer base in a new way, and the stakes of getting it right are high.
While the customers of traditional financial institutions and retail banks can walk into a branch near them and talk to a representative in person, patrons of digital banks don't have the same customer service luxury.
41% of traditional retail bank customers are digital only, which still leaves most customers showing up in person for at least some of their services.
However, despite challenges, there is good news for digital banks. An April 2021 study from J.D. Power found that banks without a branch outperformed traditional banks on customer satisfaction.
This difference in performance was because of two vital factors:
But during the pandemic, customer success declined overall for digital banks. Meanwhile, traditional retail banks saw increases in customer satisfaction.
To keep from getting eclipsed, fintech companies can fine-tune their customer service offerings:
Digital banks pride themselves on simplicity. But in a recent J.D. Power study, customer feedback relayed that self-service options such as FAQs didn’t provide enough information to answer customer questions.
To address this, fintech companies should consider investing in more in-depth guides and self-service customer support tools such as Engageware to meet customer needs.
Another challenge remains, call volume, especially as the rate of customers using digital services soars. 40% of digital bank customers waited at least 5 minutes before they spoke to a representative.
Providing customers with an option to deflect their call to self-service or chat, can help reduce the number of calls coming into customer service.
According to a recent study from Chase, the digital banking service that customers consistently give the highest marks (at every stage of personal finance) is fraud alerts.
Fintech companies offer many unique services that in-person banks don't have. With an improved customer experience, fintech companies can outperform the competition with in-person banks.
Many digital banks and fintech companies rely on a network of chatbots to answer customer problems. Robotic automated responses can get frustrating quickly without resolving a request.
Making sure that your customer engagement has a human touch is essential for banks without physical branches. Using solutions such as Chatdesk Teams lets customers interact with real-life customer support agents and replicate the personal touch of going to a local bank. Using this strategy will not only help exceed customer expectations but also improve customer retention.
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