Disruption, a term given for a significant change that comes to industries as a result of technology. The internet, social media, education, smartphones, entertainment and beyond, have all changed considerably in the last decade, displaying how technology treads at an incredible pace.
Disruption in the banking and finance industry is inevitable. FinTech is not at all new. It has been around in one or another form virtually as long as a financial service has.
Post the global crisis of 2008, FinTech evolved to disrupt and reshape commerce, investments, payments, insurance, asset management, settlement of securities and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
With the foundation of PayPal in 1998, colossal disruption is being witnessed in the investments, banking, lending and the insurance industry in India. Also, the best part is that these changes are being embraced as quickly as they come.
Pondering over the banking industry, the cynosure is to provide a secure banking environment along with flexible and personalized banking services for its customers.
Mobile banking has now become a part of the core banking strategy of most of the financial institutions. Banks are moving to cloud to innovate and adapt their services to meet the rapidly changing customer expectation. Every bank today has gone mobile because customers expect them to be easily accessible.
It is evident that the financial institutions are working harder than ever to deliver more value through insights and relevant offers that data-driven technologies can provide.
How Chat Integrations Improve Website & App experiences
If we talk about the on-demand marketplaces, all that matters is the spontaneity and responsiveness. Now, users are accustomed to transactions at the push of a button, and hence the engagement level has witnessed an upswing.
The key lies in keeping the user engaged in utilizing an ongoing conversation throughout the purchase journey. In the current scenario, just about every tool you use or website you visit has introduced chat integration features to make the decision making faster with better communication.
Chat as a communication channel is less time-consuming and more convenient. Keeping the user in a loop plays a vital role in enhancing the user experience, and the user does not feel neglected at any point in time.
Some of the key benefits of Chat Integration are:
Improves engagement: Users can connect with advisors and other users over chat.
Improves transparency: Users can get clearer information about your products/services through chat, and since they can chat with advisors, consultants and other users, there’s greater transparency.
Improves user trust: When users have an authentic and transparent source of information, their trust on your brand is elevated.
Improves conversion: Since users trust your brand and have clearer understanding of your product/service, conversions improve.
User convenience: Chat allows user convenience in terms of transactions because they can easily share information and clarify their doubts about any purchase.
Faster transactions: With convenience, there’s improved speed of transactions.
Builds brand advocates: When users are engaged, converted, and satisfied with the purchase, they become advocates.
Chat in Banking and Finance Sector
Just like many other sectors, banking sector and the online payment systems can also enhance their services with chat integration features on their website or application through which the customers can easily communicate with customer care representatives, without even stepping their foot in the bank.
Video calling can bring about a personal touch when it comes to customer experience. It is effortless to understand that when a bank is able to provide personal and immediate service within its customer’s channel choice, the customer satisfaction increases. This is the reason many banks are turning to chat technology in order to strengthen the customer relationships.
For instance, Kotak Mahindra Bank has introduced video communication solution which enables a more spontaneous and authentic communication experience between the advisor and the investor.
Chat Solutions for Banking & Fintech Industry
With the evolution of technology in financial and banking sector, chat integration features can set a benchmark concerning customer experience and satisfaction.
Physical presence is fading away gradually as technology empowers customers to use banking services with voice commands and touch screens.
Have a look over the chat integration features to get a better understanding of it in the banking and finance sector:
Giving a Personalized Touch with Text, Voice and Video Chats
About 70% of the consumers wish to use virtual communication to interact with their banks. With Voice & Video Calling in banks, the interest of a customer can be protected.
It will become easy for the customers to solve the issues they have with their banks and can inquire about anything they don’t understand. This will also prevent overcrowding in the banks by almost 45%. The queues in the banks will reduce and so will the bank’s potential cost.
On the other hand, the chat options can enhance user-to-user engagement within the fin-tech applications. The financial websites, being the experts, can provide financial consultations, investment advice over Video Calling.
Consultation service providers can also provide financial consultations and investment advice using the Voice & Video Calling feature. Suppose a person wants to know about investment or trading options, they can connect with a professional consultant through this feature and the consultant can then help the person in taking informed financial and business solutions.
Use Case Scenario: Mr Will witnessed a fraudulent transaction from his account. He can directly chat with the customer care executive and can file a report for the fraudulent transaction instead of waiting in queues or calling the representative again and again.
Access to File Sharing
With the file sharing feature, users can share a copy of essential documents required by a bank or any finance company.
What can be more comfortable than file sharing? You don’t need to visit the bank whether you want to open your new bank account or want to go for investment plans.
Chat in fintech applications enables conversations between consultants, advisors, and users where users can share financial documents and reports with their advisors or consultants allowing for better consultation on financial matters.
Use Case Scenario: If Ankit wants a new bank account, he can ask for the required documents from the bank executive and avoid being stuck in long lines at the bank
Role Based Access Control for Premium Customers
Want to restrict the access of the features to your premium members? While financial institutions provide consultation services to all their customers, with Role Based Access Control, the users can have access to limited or all consultation features on a particular website or application.
This implies that the premium customers will be able to use all the premium services offered by the finance companies and if a user wants access to all, he needs to upgrade his existing plan.
Hence, finance institutions can bank on these in-built monetization features and generate revenue opportunities.
Use Case Scenario: Shiv has a gold membership for a particular finance company and can access all the features of consultation services including the advice on planning financial future, investment planning, taxes and insurance decisions. On the other hand, Akash who has a silver membership needs to upgrade to gold in order to avail all the consultation services.
Credit Deduction Feature
Pay for what you use, the concept is simple. With the credit deduction feature, credits will be deducted from the user’s account when they use features like audio, video, or text chat.
Suppose you use the Voice & Video Calling feature, then correspondingly, the credit used for the feature gets credited from your account.
Use Case Scenario: Suppose Ramesh is looking to make an investment in mutual funds but is not sure how mutual funds work. He decided that he should take a financial investment session with any XYZ consultant via video chat. So in order to get the required consultation, the credits for using the video chat feature will be deducted from Ramesh’s account.
The Bottom Line
About 64% of consumers prefer messaging over email and calls.
About 63% of consumers use messaging apps to talk with brands.
About 35% of consumers want to see more companies with Chatbots.
About 60% of consumers prefer to shop with a brand using the chat applications.
A digital boom is undoubtedly taking place across all segments of banking, and we are eagerly awaiting the other bracing changes that this segment would bestow upon us.
With chat integration features embedded in websites and apps, a personalized touch can be given to the consumers which would increase the conversion rate of customers to loyal ones. The factors may differ from bank to bank yet the crux of the motion would remain centered towards technology at large.
Team CometChat
