To put it lightly, customer service has changed in the past decade. To put it accurately, customer service and experience has completely transformed, and like other industries, financial services must continue to evolve and grow with customer demands.
Specifically, banks and credit unions have traditionally provided value in ways separate from customer experience. Security, regulation and legal protection are core characteristics of financial institutions, and will always be valuable.
However, customers now have higher expectations for banks, and are looking for an enhanced customer experience that impacts their lives. Consider the following ways your organization can be a servant to your customers’ needs, goals and aspirations.
Serve Budgeting
Budgeting is one of the most tangible ways a financial institution can utilize customer data to provide unique value. There is a catch, however – it has to be useful and meaningful.
In this sense, think about if your organization is ready and willing to provide this feature, and if so, dive in. Poorly-categorized expenses, inability to fully capture all transactions, lack of customization and lack of month-over-month measurement are key downfalls of budgeting apps and interfaces. If you can overcome these barriers, you open the opportunity to become a meaningful part of your customers’ day-to-day lives.
Serve Unique Opportunities
With access to customers’ financial information, your financial institution can provide information about unique opportunities customers will want to utilize. Utilizing information like their age, spending habits and monthly income, you can make targeted and customized recommendations for products like investment accounts, life insurance and other types of loans when you think your customer will need them.
Be a Knowledge Expert
The financial world is always changing, and it’s sometimes hard for average consumers to keep up. Financial institutions should bear this load for their customers, giving them only the most pertinent information about macro-economic trends and the ways they impact individuals’ finances. Think about one-time COVID-payments, Roth IRA cap increases, and tax changes as opportunities to provide unique value to your customers based on their unique financial pictures.
Protect their Downside
Security is hugely important for consumers, and most Americans are trying to self-educate and make smart decisions, particularly in terms of the ways they incur debt and how that might pay off for them in the future. With a wealth of experience, banks and credit unions should work to advise consumers about this, warn them when they might be over-leveraged, and provide resources for more in-depth consulting. This provides a potential new stream of revenue for your financial institution, enhances your relationship with your customers, and most importantly, protects their financial wellbeing in order to create a meaningful and valuable relationship.
