Eximee Team
The coronavirus epidemic was challenging for everyone, including people and businesses. Customers who did not use online banking services have become more accustomed to these digital channels. Online stores are the most popular shopping option. Platform providers offer education online, and you can handle official matters remotely.
On the other hand, the labor market crisis, high inflation rates, and uncertainty are making bank customers cautious with money. This leads to more requests to pause loan repayments, to grant power of attorney, and to exchange documents with the bank.
The situation affects acquiring new prospects, selling products, and serving existing customers. Unfortunately, in many banks, you cannot handle all issues related to online banking services online. Thus, the ability to settle daily banking matters digitally has become crucial to a bank's service quality.
In a perfect world, we would deal with all operations related to online banking services online. Why is this not the case?
The ongoing successful service of online banking services in digital channels relies on two things.
First, banks must enable customers to handle issues related to online banking services using their preferred digital channels. Judging the quality of a product or service involves its accessibility and simplicity. This includes efficiently delivering files like certificates, documents, or regulations.
Second, banks must process customer service requests efficiently.
To enable customers to handle banking errands online, provide them with tools such as electronic forms in desktop and mobile banking applications. Designing the perfect data collection process from a customer is labor-intensive.
Following the principle of “better done than perfect," consider some simplifications and later refine the process. The total set of service requests a customer could submit can reach several hundred items, depending on the product range.
Significant subsets of these processes share a common pattern, simplified to: “description → document → acknowledgment → acceptance."
By building on a “template" and reusing graphical components, you can bypass integrating with the bank's API. This allows for quick creation of online forms in the desired channels—primarily online and mobile banking applications.
For example, for a temporary suspension of loan repayment request, instead of creating widgets for selecting a loan account, provide a text field. Here, users can enter their loan agreement number or describe it as they would in a branch. The aim is to offer an online self-service option, even if simplified or temporary, allowing customers to complete tasks without visiting the branch.
Furthermore, the similarities across processes support a component-based approach in developing electronic forms. This approach enables the reuse of many elements in other processes, such as:
Leverage the “template," reuse graphical components, and bypass the integration with the banking API. This enables the quick creation and embedding of an online form in online and mobile banking applications. Implementing such a simplified process can take just a few days.
How to ensure customers quickly find what they need in online banking services? Read the article How to help bank customers get things done online.
For a bank, making products and services available online is just the beginning, because they still need to be processed in some way. How can these operations be assisted?
Naturally, it would be best if all processes were automated, and bank employees would be involved only when necessary.
Unfortunately, developing several hundred processes is uneconomic and impossible. However, there are ways around this.
Service requests placed by customers online are sent to a central service point where employees process them manually.
It requires providing the employees (e.g., via email to the bank's internal mailbox) with the request details that can be easily read and entered into the system – for instance, as a PDF document.
However, centralized handling of a large number of requests may quickly exceed the capabilities of a single group of employees.
Therefore, it is worth considering the decentralization of service request processing and engaging other resources – branch employees.
As in the case of centralized processing, online service requests can be forwarded to branch employees.
How does the system decide which branch the case goes to?
Since all necessary customer data is known to the bank (the customer completes a form as a logged-in user) – the parent branch is also known. If the request can be handled by any branch, forward it (e.g., as an email with a PDF attachment containing data from the client's application form) to the least busy branch or choose the most suitable branch according to a different key.
Note that there are types of requests that require manual handling. For example, in the case of a customer who wants to reduce the limits on the card, the bank may activate an “anti-churn" procedure. Under such a procedure, the bank contacts the customer to dissuade them from resigning from the product or to offer better terms.
Manual processing of customer service requests consumes considerable amounts of time, but automation is expensive and not profitable for all processes.
The implementation of manual processing is easier, and it can be treated as a temporary solution. It does not close the door to automating the process at a certain point in future. What's more, it buys you some time needed to properly plan the automation of the most cost-effective processes and then execute this plan under less time pressure.
If you want to learn more about automating digital banking processes, read Process automation – why combine BPMS with the Eximee low-code development platform?
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the number of customers using online banking services, but many banks still do not offer all services online. There is no doubt about the trend, though. All banks are increasing their digital proposition, and those most advanced can offer the most to customers in difficult times. To improve customer satisfaction, banks should enable online self-service options, develop an efficient way to remotely process cases in a centralized unit or branches, and automate the most cost-effective processes.
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