How Banks can use Internal Data to Improve Customer Experience

We live in a data-driven world. Good data and relevant industry and market forecasts are the top driving forces behind long-term business growth in any industry. When it comes to banking and fintech, however, collecting and acting on viable data can tell you whether or not your customers are happy. This can mean the difference between success and failure in 2022 and beyond.

Only by obtaining, analyzing, and putting key data points into actionable reports can banking leaders retain their competitiveness. At the center of it all is the problem of maintaining and improving customer experience (CX) across the board.

Banking institutions can only hope to elevate their sales processes, such as lead generation, and then boost acquisition and retention by focusing on the customers’ journey and experience. To achieve their CX goals, leaders need to invest in the right data-driven strategies and technologies.

With all of that in mind, here’s how you can use internal data to drive customer experience forward in 2022.

Personalized Products and Services

Personalization is a popular buzzword nowadays in almost every industry, but that doesn’t make it less important for lead generation, customer retention, and CX in the competitive banking sector. It should come as no surprise that banks that collect customer feedback can digitalize the right experiences faster and leverage data to personalize those digital experiences to the needs of the individual.

One example in the banking sector is Erste Group, they’re collecting customer feedback with Usersnap to optimize their online banking app and bring new UX-based and quality-of-life features to their product. The only way it’s possible for Erste Group to improve the online banking experience is through collecting feedback continuously and seamlessly from their customers.

Make data collecting and analysis a priority. You can then make it easy for your customers to share their experiences with you. You can do this through a customer engagement platform or other communication methods. These include email, DMs, and traditional phone calls.

A great way to start personalizing your products and services is to complement feedback with your internal data. But if all this strains your internal IT resources, you may find it makes sense to move some of your data to the cloud. Of course, compliance and security are of paramount importance, so you’ll want to select a partner who can help you manage the cloud migration of your data.

Creating Digital Banking Assistants 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are pivotal technologies in the fintech and banking sectors nowadays, allowing you to use business intelligence to your advantage. Leaders can leverage these technologies to improve internal processes, analyze vast amounts of data quickly, and even bring AI-driven solutions to life for their customers.

Efficient and effective data analysis and data science are crucial for fintech success and tech implementation, and fintech software development is nowadays heavily focusing on AI-driven banking assistants to achieve this. A digital banking assistant can prove invaluable for conversational marketing in the banking app.

By developing your own AI assistant, you can not only elevate CX through better customer management, but you can also start collecting even more data with each interaction. Your assistant can produce vast amounts of behavioral and conversational data. You can use that data to improve the digital banking experience as a whole.

Automation and Minimizing Human Error

Mistakes happen, but in the fintech and banking sectors, even the smallest mistakes can have dire consequences. Especially when it comes to long-term customer satisfaction. Operations employees in the banking industry are constantly handling and managing repetitive tasks. This leads to fatigue and increases the risk of human error. Approving loans, processing payments, reviewing customer disputes and complaints are just some of the intricate tasks.

It is important to automate processes and use the right automation tools. Not only to collect data more efficiently but improve operations processes as a whole. Automation in the banking sector is one of the keys to customer retention and satisfaction, simply by minimizing the risk of identity theft when handling sensitive customer data and financial processes.

Your internal data will tell you what processes you should automate first, but generally, the best ways to implement automation in banking include:

• Customer support via chatbot technology
• Email automation
• Online debit card or credit card application processing
• Fraud detection and customer authentication
• Loan processing
• Accounts payable automation
• Automating mortgage processing

These are some of the processes you can automate in 2022 to generate more meaningful insights. In turn, this level of automation will minimize the risk of human error and empower your employees to deliver a better customer experience in banking.

Emphasizing Cybersecurity in Online Banking

It should go without saying that cybersecurity is one of the most pressing issues in the banking and fintech sectors today. Any business that deals with sensitive user information and payment processing need to emphasize data security. Privacy protection in 2022 is also important to improve customer satisfaction.

Your internal data, coupled with rigorous security pen testing, will prove vital in strengthening your software and API security. To protect your sensitive business data from leakage and build user trust, you will need to collect data from your digital banking platform. You will also need to test your security regularly.

What you will find is that you should bolster your security. You can do this through secure API gateways, hardware firewalls, multi-factor authentication, and more firewall testing. To achieve this, you will need to leverage cybersecurity experts in the fintech field.

Elevating CX with blockchain technology

Blockchain technology is revolutionary in many ways. There’s no denying that banks are using blockchain solutions to improve internal processes and data science. There are many uses for the blockchain in the banking sector, including:

• Clearing and settlement
• Payments and accepting digital currencies
• Trade finance
• Identity authentication as well as identity protection
• Syndicated loans

Forward-thinking banking institutions are always looking for ways to leverage the blockchain to improve CX, which often means getting into the cryptocurrency space, as well.

Now that customers can buy Tether and other cryptocurrencies online with ease and that cryptos are readily available for purchase, banking leaders need to start innovating with their own ICOs (initial coin offerings) to capitalize on the expanding cryptocurrency market. 

Blockchain innovation in these areas requires vast amounts of data, comprehensive forecasting, and staying on top of banking and cryptocurrency trends. This is one of the best ways you can leverage internal and external data to bring your banking institution into the blockchain space, but most importantly, ensure a positive ROI on all your solutions.

Data-Driven Management and Leadership

Not all internal data serves the purpose of directly improving customer experience. Banking leaders can leverage it to improve internal processes to improve CX indirectly. In other words, it pays to start leveraging internal data to improve leadership and managerial processes within the employee collective to improve productivity, efficiency, and employee satisfaction.

Improving these key areas will invariably boost your bottom line and improve customer happiness through better service and a better banking experience.

By collecting employee behavioral and work data and monitoring collaboration and communication channels between teams and departments, leaders can identify key pain points and challenges to address with the right tactics and tools.

Simplifying and making communication more straightforward both vertically and horizontally is one of the best ways to improve internal efficiency and productivity.

Likewise, automation can empower employees to focus on complex tasks while outsourcing the repetitive ones to automation tools and chatbots.

Capitalizing on Better Talent Acquisition 

Good leadership and management directly influence the talent in your company and incentivizes the employee collective to achieve better results. But what happens when you need new talented individuals to join your ranks? Banking institutions that are focusing on the future of customer needs and demands are always looking for talented employees to take the business forward in their sector.

To access the right talent pool and bring the best of the best to the business, you need to prioritize data-driven recruitment, onboarding, and talent nurturing. Leverage your existing employee, HR analytics, and workplace data to identify the key challenges that might be holding your new employees back.

Use the data to streamline the onboarding process for new hires and find ideal candidates that will fit your brand. This will make a significant impact on the customer experience when dealing with your new employees.

Start Analyzing Your Internal Data

Data is a foundational element of business success in banking and the fintech world, and only by using data to your advantage can you implement the right tools and tactics to elevate the customer experience. People not only want a personalized banking experience, but they also want better security, innovation, ease of use and user-friendliness, and much more.

To achieve this with your digital products and services, you need to manage your data wisely. You can start using all that data to your advantage through ClicData’s interactive dashboards and a complete suite of data management tools.

Make sure to capitalize on your internal data in 2022 and future-proof your business in the fast-paced financial world!

About the author

Nikola is a seasoned brand developer, writer, and storyteller. Over the last decade, he’s worked on various marketing, branding, and copywriting projects – crafting plans and strategies, writing creative online and offline content, and making ideas happen. When he is not working for clients around the world, he is exploring new topics and developing fresh ideas to turn into engaging stories for the online community.