According to the Fintech Association of Consumers (FAC), an astounding 87% of customers consider excellent customer service as a vital factor when choosing a financial technology (fintech) provider. This eye-opening statistic, underscores the growing significance of delivering top-notch customer service in the fast-evolving landscape of fintech customer experience. As we navigate through 2023, where innovation continues to reshape the financial industry, mastering the art of exceptional customer service has never been more crucial. In this blog, you'll explore the ten most effective strategies that are poised to elevate your fintech customer service game and foster lasting customer relationships. From leveraging AI-powered solutions to embracing a personalized approach, get ready to embark on a journey towards unparalleled customer satisfaction and business success.
Why Is Customer Service Vital for Financial Technology?
Absolutely stellar customer service fintech doesn't just feel good – it functions as a company's most potent form of marketing. Its impact resonates across various dimensions, from cultivating positive reputations and reviews to influencing stock prices, employee contentment, and revenue streams.
The landscape of financial services underwent a seismic shift with the 2008 financial crisis, eroding public trust in traditional banks and spotlighting the allure of the burgeoning fintech revolution. Fintech, an abbreviation for financial technology, is rapidly becoming a transformative force that's reshaping customer support paradigms within the financial sector.
The paradigm shift from conventional banking to fintech introduces an innovative perspective on customer support for financial institutions. In contrast to the limitations of traditional in-person banking, fintech support services wield a superior edge. Their hallmark attributes include agility, the provision of personalized assistance, and around-the-clock availability, even in remote contexts.
Fintech support services usher in an era of enriched convenience, elevated experiences, transparency, and choice for customers. Achieving this is facilitated through modern, user-friendly interfaces, augmented by bespoke customer support and specialized expertise.
Key attributes of fintech support services include:
- Acting as a conduit between advisors and customers.
- Cultivating a customer-centric approach.
- Aiming to render financial services seamlessly comfortable for customers.
- Furnishing customers with gratifying service experiences.
- Relieving the obligation of physical meetings with financial advisors.
- Operating 24/7 to cater to customer needs.
- Furnishing financial institutions with invaluable customer feedback and analytics to drive improvements.
While many fintech customer experience companies offer remarkable features, some grapple with maintaining customer satisfaction due to evolving expectations.
A J.D. Power study from April 2021 unveiled a compelling finding: banks without physical branches outperformed their traditional counterparts in customer satisfaction.
The divergence in performance is attributed to several components of superior financial customer service fintech, including:
- Dispensing pertinent and meaningful financial guidance.
- Prioritizing a seamless and user-friendly customer journey.
- Fostering robust communication between advisors and customers.
- Effectively addressing customer discontent and concerns.
Rising customer expectations and shifts in behavior have prompted fintech customer experience entities to step up their game, prioritizing a customer-first mindset to remain competitive and aligned with evolving needs. Present-day customers are increasingly less forgiving if their expectations are unmet. A recent PwC study discovered that approximately 86% of customers contemplate switching banks if their requirements aren't met.
Consequently, delivering impeccable customer service is no longer an option but a necessity for fintech customer onboarding & experience platforms. It's instrumental in assisting customers, mitigating complaints, delivering tailored experiences, and enhancing the overall customer journey.
Having set the stage, let's delve into a collection of premier tips designed to refine your customer service fintech offerings, fostering heightened customer loyalty and satisfaction.
10 Best Strategies to Improve Fintech Customer Service in 2024
1. Provide an Omnichannel Experience
Omnichannel, in the realm of customer service, is far more than just a provision of multiple transactional avenues. It signifies the seamless and uniform interaction between customers and financial institutions across diverse channels. This multifaceted approach to customer service fintech brings about a host of advantages:
- Client-Centric View: Prioritizing the client's perspective and preferences.
- Multi-Channel Interaction: Allowing customers to engage through various channels.
- Analyzing Customer Desires: Utilizing analytics to discern customer needs and wants.
- System of Engagement: Built on interactive systems.
- Leveraging Big Data: Incorporating customer context for improved service.
Notably, Oracle reports that a staggering 80% of customers employ digital channels to engage with financial institutions, while 66% consider "experience" pivotal in selecting payment and transfer services. Trends reflect that nearly 95% of customers deploy three or more channels during a single brand interaction. Consequently, adeptness in delivering an omnichannel customer experience, enabling seamless transactions and service through preferred digital platforms, becomes paramount.
2. Offer Greater Control with Self-Service Tools
In contemporary Fintech customer service, self-service has transitioned from a supplementary feature to an imperative requirement. This transformation is evidenced by the fact that approximately 70% of customers now anticipate encountering a self-service application on a company's website. Research indicates that over 69% of individuals prefer to autonomously resolve issues before engaging customer support.
Self-service capabilities have an integral role in financial customer satisfaction, as they empower clients to independently troubleshoot, thus circumventing unnecessary interactions with support personnel. This facet also liberates customer service agents, allowing them to address more intricate scenarios. A sophisticated self-service banking system can optimize your customer service fintech approach by reducing ticket volume, wait times, and customer frustration.
Providing customers the ability to take control via a comprehensive help center emerges as an efficacious strategy. Furnishing vital information directly accessible through your website and app enhances customer empowerment. Key merits encompass:
- Cost Reduction: Efficiently scales customer support while minimizing expenses.
- 24/7 Support: Accommodating customers' need for round-the-clock assistance.
- Boosted Productivity: Alleviating repetitive queries, enhancing staff efficiency.
- Enhanced Revenue: Satisfaction from self-sufficient issue resolution amplifies transactions.
3. Improve Customer Response Time
The response time in customer service entails the average duration required for a support team to attend to customer inquiries, complaints, or requests via diverse channels like contact forms, emails, social media, or live chat.
A pivotal dimension of exemplary customer service fintech is prompt responsiveness. An increasing number of customers anticipate near-instant access across a variety of communication avenues. According to HubSpot, 90% of customers consider an "immediate" response to their service queries as highly important. Defining response time objectives forms the initial stride towards ameliorating this crucial metric.
Leveraging customer relationship management (CRM) tools such as Juphy enables holistic tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs) encompassing overall and social media performance. Prioritizing queries based on urgency and importance permits tailored and effective responsiveness. Streamlining responses through templates aids in addressing routine inquiries, ensuring that more intricate issues receive personalized attention.
4. Stay Consistent Across All Channels
Consistency constitutes the cornerstone of exceptional customer service. Salesforce affirms that over 75% of consumers anticipate a harmonious experience across multiple channels for customer support. Alarmingly, 73% of consumers admit to contemplating brand switches when this expectation is unmet. Elevating the priority accorded to customer care heightens the likelihood of customer loyalty.
Around 40% of customers employ multiple channels for addressing the same issue, and a substantial 90% seek consistent experiences across diverse platforms and devices. Ensuring uniformity necessitates alignment among various departments, encompassing call center agents, sales teams, and marketing professionals. Crafting response strategies for assorted customer-related concerns within these guidelines is pivotal, contributing to cohesive experiences.
Formulating comprehensive customer service guidelines elucidates the modus operandi for addressing various scenarios. This directive document addresses aspects like:
- Response Timelines: Establishing ideal time frames for different types of queries.
- Tone of Communication: Prescribing the appropriate tone of voice.
- Crisis Management: Addressing strategies during potential crises.
- Positive Feedback Handling: Guiding responses to affirmative interactions.
Guidelines are particularly indispensable for geographically dispersed teams, unifying diverse team members through shared key performance indicators and procedural standards. Such guidelines fortify your customer service fintech team's ability to deliver contextually appropriate, personalized support.
5. Humanize & Personalize Customer Interactions
The evolving demands of customers underscore a burgeoning desire for personalized interactions. Infusing human warmth into interactions surpasses expectations and bolsters customer retention. Global Banking and Finance Review highlights the challenge faced by fintech customer experience firms to "retain the human touch" as they refine their technological arsenals.
Despite the prevalence of chatbots, which offer efficiency, reliance on them alone can frustrate customers by failing to effectively resolve issues. Integrating human interaction, especially in complex scenarios, preserves the human element of customer care.
Striking the balance between technology-driven interactions and human touch involves:
- Seamless Transition: Empowering customers to switch between channels effortlessly.
- Personalization: Recognizing and catering to individual needs.
- Direct Human Interaction: Ensuring customers can access human assistance.
- Case-Specific Responses: Customizing replies to address unique customer needs.
This humanizing approach to customer interactions not only underscores exclusivity but also contributes to a warmer, more tailored customer experience, exceeding expectations and fostering long-term loyalty.
6. Gather Customer Feedback
The process of soliciting customer feedback holds immense value in evaluating satisfaction levels and pinpointing areas for improvement within your products or services. This reservoir of feedback is instrumental in refining your customer service fintech journey and experience.
Customer feedback serves as a vital instrument for fintech companies:
- Identification of Weak Points: Illuminating aspects in need of enhancement.
- Customer Involvement: Rendering customers active participants in the process.
- Personal Recommendations: Enabling word-of-mouth referrals.
- Enhanced Customer Loyalty: Cultivating a sense of being heard and valued.
- Customer Acquisition: Using positive feedback to attract new clients.
- Brand Loyalty: Cementing trust and allegiance.
- Leveraging Negative Feedback: Translating criticism into improvement opportunities.
To overcome the challenge of survey aversion, strategies such as incorporating surveys into emails, keeping them concise, and offering incentives can be employed. Additionally, tapping into analytics tools for feedback collection further enriches the arsenal for enhancing customer support.
7. Handle Customer Queries and Respond Instantly
In a world where customers demand real-time solutions, leaving them waiting for assistance can lead to frustration and anxiety. Consider a scenario: it's 4:00 AM, and a client encounters a perplexing issue that requires immediate attention. Waiting until the traditional working hours for a response could induce panic. Addressing this demand for constant support is pivotal.
Instantaneous response through AI-powered agents. These intelligent chatbots play a vital role by addressing approximately 80% of customer queries without human intervention. This ensures that routine financial inquiries receive prompt replies, eradicating the need for customers to endure waiting periods or heightened stress.
For more intricate queries, a seamless transition to live chat agents is facilitated within the same chat window. This eliminates the hassle of shifting between communication channels. Consequently, the necessity of hiring an extensive roster of agents for every shift is reduced. Scaling up support becomes efficient, allowing human agents to tackle complex queries while the AI bot manages routine interactions.
8. Send Notifications Over an App That Your Customers Actually Use
Traditional methods of sending notifications via email or SMS may not guarantee timely visibility to customers. This is especially problematic for critical notifications concerning account activity. The challenge lies in ensuring that customers promptly receive important updates.
Enter the WhatsApp chatbot. Leveraging the popularity of this app, notifications can be sent directly to customers who frequently engage with it—averaging 23 times a day for 28 minutes. With WhatsApp's distinctive notification system, the likelihood of notifications going unnoticed diminishes significantly.
9. Step Up Your Data Security
Building a positive customer experience hinges on establishing trust. For FinTech customer experience companies, data security emerges as a paramount concern. Beyond safeguarding financial transactions, it's crucial to secure customer support data to bolster confidence in your services.
Prioritizing PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance and attaining certification is foundational. Meeting the stipulated requirements of PCI DSS standards is imperative for obtaining certification. This demonstrates your commitment to securing sensitive financial data.
Furthermore, adherence to the ISO/IEC 27001:2013 standard for data security is pivotal. This internationally recognized benchmark underscores your dedication to maintaining the highest levels of data protection. Elevating data security not only safeguards customer information but also fosters an environment of trust and reliability.
10. Foster a Continuous Dialogue
Chances are high that your customers will frequently have ongoing inquiries about their accounts. They're driven by the desire to optimize their financial decisions and ensure they're making the most of their investments. Inevitably, questions will arise during this journey.
We're observing a transformation in customer-company interactions, particularly evident due to the pandemic. A noticeable shift toward messaging channels is underway, as customers increasingly favor this mode of communication. The advantage of engaging through messaging lies in the ability to maintain a comprehensive conversation history. This continuity facilitates personalized interactions and cultivates a more profound rapport with customers.
In the year 2020, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) experienced a substantial uptick in messaging volume. This included a 55% rise in WhatsApp messages, a 47% surge in SMS/text messages, and a 37% increase in engagement through platforms like Facebook Messenger and Twitter DMs. This shift underscores the evolving customer preferences and the growing significance of maintaining consistent, history-rich conversations with customers.
Conclusion
In the culmination of our exploration into the symbiotic relationship between financial technology and exceptional customer service fintech, it's evident that customer-centricity remains pivotal in the fintech landscape. As fintech continues to innovate, these strategies stand as pillars that reinforce the industry's commitment to delivering tailored, secure, and seamless experiences, underscoring the transformative potential of blending technology with exceptional customer care.
App0 is a customer engagement platform designed specifically for financial services companies. Our platform empowers banks, credit unions, and fintechs to create next-generation customer experiences through conversational interfaces and user-friendly design, while focused on security and compliance.
App0 aims to bring about a paradigm shift in the realm of workflow automation by leveraging messaging. Our platform streamlines the processes of initiating financial transactions and is easy to connect with your customers in meaningful ways by unifying communications across multiple channels and centrally managing user preferences.
If you’re intrigued by our solution, Request a Demo here to learn more on how our messaging-based approach can revolutionize and enhance customer experience in the fintech industry.
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