Banks and financial institutions are increasingly realizing the fact that they need to develop more responsive ways to engage with their client base. The consumerization of technology has made this a business imperative.
Customer care can affect a bank’s reputation. On-going local branch closures, waiting in line when you do turn up in person, and placed on hold forever when you call in, only to fail the security test before you are allowed to speak with someone are some of the reputation pitfalls. While banks provide comprehensive websites and downloadable apps, these apps are often informational or transactional in nature and lack customer engagement to provide a good customer experience.
The growing popularity of messaging apps live chat, and other technical developments in communication have put pressure on the world of banking and finance. They realize now more than ever that if they want to capture market share and retain their customer base, they need to provide a platform that allows for direct, immediate, and personal communication.
For example, a recent GlobalData report documented the increased reliance on chat applications by millennials in Asia-Pacific. In the second quarter of 2018, over 40% of this population relied on chat to contact their wealth manager, which was a 10 percentage point increase since 2017. This should be of no surprise as chat provides an easy and immediate way to engage with a consultant.
Some industry observers point to the potential security risks involved by using social media tools for communication, as banks and finance operate under strict regulations regarding the storage and transfer of data. However, such concerns can be easily overcome if banks and financial institutions look to partner with responsible third-party communication providers who are well versed in their regulatory requirements and who provide on-premise deployment of their software to ensure that these organizations maintain control of their data.
The following piece highlights how and why implementing chat, voice, and video API into your banking solution can greatly enhance your customer experience. It then suggests why QuickBlox–a back-end communication provider with a proven track record of working successfully with finance and banking companies–serves as an optimal partner for this project to deliver a secure and feature-rich communication platform.
Integrate communication features to improve your customer experience
Offering several means for your customer to communicate with you is not about adding bells and whistles to your existing banking app, or simply following a fad. Social networking and messaging apps are here to stay and have dramatically influenced customer expectations. While banking apps and websites provide helpful information and a viable means to complete simple transactions, customers still expect and want to communicate directly with their financial adviser (FA) or banking relationship manager (RM). Live chat, text messaging, voice and video calling provide an invaluable means to facilitate contact, improve customer service, save time and expense, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Here are some use cases of how communication features can help improve your customer relations:
- Responsive customer care
Integrating communication features into a banking platform provides the means to offer a responsive customer care system. The integration of live chat in the company website or mobile application provides an immediate way to ask a question, get the information you need, and complete a transaction. It’s fast, efficient, and relatively inexpensive.
Instant messaging provides customers with a direct line to their FA or RM. As with their use of live chat, customers when using messaging can request information, authorize transactions, and seek advice but with the added benefit that they can leave and return to the conversation as it suits them. All conversations are saved and accessible when needed.
Voice and video-calling features fully personalize the banking experience. The ability to see your FA or RM helps to build trust in relationships.
Whether by live chat, messaging, voice, or video calls, all these communication forms facilitate prompt seamless communication that saves time, allows transactions to run more smoothly, and generally leaves your customer feeling that they have been heard and supported.
- Know Your Customer (KYC) Compliance
Banks and financial institutions are mandated by law to be KYC compliant. Authenticating the identity of their customer is a key component of this compliance. Historically, this has been a somewhat tedious process. Banking customers have been asked to come in person to their local branch so that they can be visibly seen and to personally hand in verifying documents. There is a move now to digitize this process. Adding communication functionality can also be employed to facilitate KYC procedures. Secure file-sharing of media-rich files including all file types including photos and pdfs, secure messaging that can be archived, and recordable high-quality video calling, provide a variety of customer identity verification processes. Digital means for KYC compliance offers numerous benefits, namely timeliness and efficiency saving time and money, and providing a positive impact on the customer. Furthermore, the data received is easily stored and transferable with the security needed including encrypted connections, encrypted files, and databases.
- Notifications to facilitate and close transactions
Push notifications provide a helpful tool to guide your customer through certain transactions such as opening up a bank account, applying for a loan, setting up a commercial trade or an investment fund, etc. Customers can be sent personalized notifications when particular parts of the process are completed or alerts when further action is required. This type of ongoing communication, which keeps the customer informed of where they are in the process and allows them to feel that they are being supported throughout with additional help only ever a click away, means a customer is less likely to abandon a transaction mid-way.
Why Use QuickBlox?
Integrating live chat, text messaging, voice, or video functionality into your banking platform allows you to build a powerful communication solution for your bank or financial institution. To achieve a successful outcome and to ensure you remain compliant with regulatory requirements you need to partner with a communication provider who understands your security needs, offers secure software deployment options, and provides the feature-rich chat API and voice and video calling capabilities that you require. QuickBlox ticks all of these boxes.
- Private Cloud and On-premise Deployment
QuickBlox offers a range of secure hosting options including on-premise and private cloud hosting. This means they have the capability to deploy their communication software directly into your own hosting environment–your own virtual machine or physical servers, or private cloud–ensuring that you control your customer’s data, not us. Our software, your data, and users.
- Private and Secure communication
QuickBlox works closely with your information security team and in accordance with international banking standards to provide communication solutions that guard against security and compliance breaches. They are fully GDPR compliant. All chats & media files are secure as QuickBlox supports HTTPS protocol with their API, as well as Secure XMPP, Secure Bosh, and Secure WebSockets and they provide data encryption.
- Feature rich and ready-to-use API and SDKs
QuickBlox software can be easily integrated into your existing app and was built to be used across platforms from your desktop, tablet, to mobile phone. Peer-to-peer voice and video calling, high-quality video conferencing, push notifications, media-rich file sharing, real-time chat, and instant messaging, Quickblox has all the features you need for KYC.
- Q-Consultation ready solution
Understanding the particular needs of finance and banking, QuickBlox has built a fully customizable virtual waiting room with a teleconsultation app. With Q-Consultation, customers are sent a link to connect with their FA or RM. Once their identity is authenticated they are invited into a waiting room until their consultant is ready to meet in a private, fully secure, recordable teleconsultation session. The customer and representative can switch between video and voice, and there are a plethora of additional features, including file-sharing, note-taking, queue management, user authentication, etc., to make this an extremely effective communication tool.
Summary
Integrating chat, voice, and video API into your banking communication platform can greatly enhance your customer experience. Adding communication features allows you to build a more responsive customer care system, supports KYC compliance, helps facilitate transactions, saving time and money, and builds trust between your organization and your customer base. Consider partnering with a company like QuickBlox who understands the regulatory requirements banks and finance work under and offers on-premise hosting options for your software. For more information contact us.
