In today’s world, the customer is no longer king—their experience is. Financial institutions that provide a seamless, appealing customer experience (CX) will attract and retain customers with ease. However, those that present a subpar experience will see both their revenue and their reputation drop dramatically.
This is all the more important given that financial institutions now face more competition than ever before. Innovative fintechs have won consumers’ wallets thanks to their continued focus on CX. If traditional institutions don’t step up, they will soon be left behind.
Treasure Data and Forbes Insights have discovered that 74% of consumers are likely to buy based on experience alone. This is why for the past seven years, financial institutions have consistently stated that "improving the customer experience" has been their top priority.
This blog will explain how they can do this, delving into the 5 top CX trends that financial institutions (and particularly those focused on collections) must follow in 2021 and beyond.
5 essential customer experience trends
By following these 5 trends, collection departments can provide a first-class CX and retain customers over the long term.
1. Seamless customer experience
As Jay Baer, a customer experience leader, told The Financial Brand: “Anything that requires an extra bit of time, thinking, or effort to overcome, customers have very little patience for nowadays.” Similarly, anything that makes consumers feel uncertain may cause them to refuse to repay their bill.
Therefore, instead of directing customers to payment landing pages featuring other company’s branding (that customers are not familiar with), financial departments should collaborate with vendors that enable white-label functionality to provide a seamless customer experience.
2. Self-service
The collections landscape is changing rapidly. No longer do collections departments send non-stop letters through the door and refuse to engage in a dialogue with past-due customers. Instead, dunning strategies are now data-driven and human-focused.
Self-service functionality plays a huge role in this, giving consumers control over their own repayments. They can pay back at a time that suits them, on their preferred channel, and can avoid embarrassing conversations with agents. This increases the likelihood that they will engage fully in the dunning process—and that financial institutions will prevent these loans from becoming non-performing.
3. Personalisation and UX
It’s crucial that financial institutions focus on providing a pleasing UX/UI. For example, by personalising the messages they send out, they can use the messaging and channels that truly appeal to individual past-due customers. This will result in far higher repayment rates than if they were to instead send out generic messages with the same messaging for all past-due customers.
However, this is incredibly tricky to do when using a legacy collections management system. Agents cannot easily modify messages on their own and they often have to ask their colleagues in the IT department for help. This is why they need a no-code, drag-and-drop email/messaging builder. These tools allow agents to quickly create, send out, and analyse personalised messages in a matter of minutes.
4. Strong technological offering
Consumers want to deal with financial institutions that leverage the top technology currently available. With banking becoming increasingly digital (thanks largely to COVID-19), having a strong technological offering is no longer simply a nice-to-have—it’s a must. That’s why over 90% of UK-based consumers say they would switch over to a bank with strong technological services.
In the digital era, having a strong technological offering means digitally transforming every aspect of the customer experience—from opening a bank account, to transferring money, to repaying bills. By collaborating with innovative fintechs, financial institutions will possess future-proofed technology that provides seamless digital experiences, satisfies consumers’ demands, and retains customers over the long term.
5. Environmental awareness
Consumers are increasingly passionate about lowering their impact on the environment. Collections departments or agencies should therefore go paperless, replacing physical letters with more environmentally friendly (and more effective options), such as sending out emails or SMS messages.
Not only will this reduce their impact on the environment, but it will also play a positive role in increasing how consumers perceive their brand.
A cloud-native collections management system is the best solution
Collections departments/agencies need to move with the times, leveraging tools that will help them provide a great CX. In other words, a cloud-native collections management system. To find out more about receeve’s next-generation collections management system, book a demo with a member of our team.
