The Digital Banking Evolution: From Transactions to Relationships

For decades, the name of the game in banking has been about efficiency. From branches and ATMs to online and mobile banking. From paper forms to digital documentation. And even the emergence of Blockchains and bit coins … we live in a world where the big guys have the biggest budgets and those budgets are largely allocated to cost-reduction initiatives.

Unfortunately, with many of these steps forward towards efficiency, there has been a step backwards in the ability to build better customer relationships. What was positioned as a ‘better way to do banking’ was usually better for the banks more than for the consumer.

Finally, after investing heavily on the digital channel and the technological enhancements it can offer, we are on the precipice of actually using these technologies to achieve better outcomes for customers. The focus is no longer just about creating a pleasing user experience, an attractive visual design and easier ways to get things done. It runs much deeper – to actually driving the technology to go beyond simply making the operations of the financial institution more efficient, to truly adding value to customers’ lives.

Unique Insights into A Digital Evolution within Financial Services

Design firms, agencies and developers need to stay in regular communication with industry leadership teams to gain unique insight into the relative prioritization of initiatives. In the last 12 months, there has been a tipping point. After years of espousing the needs of a more robust and thoughtful digital strategy, user experience, and design, banks and CUs are finally committing the budgets and resources to make it happen.

Success is no longer solely centered around just making the experience look good. The digital channel needs to DO more. It needs to be more than just the pretty face of design and UX. More than just another opportunity to reduce costs. More than just a way to get tasks done faster. To address this, banks are now focusing on evaluating initiatives that can add real value to their customers’ lives.

With this cultural shift inside the leadership teams of financial services firms, a whole new world of opportunities awaits. Digital partners can finally set out to build experiences where great visual design and UX are table takes. Where partners can build relationship engines on top of those amazing visual and user experiences – all while continuing to extend programmatic efficiencies. This means more than just rout role-based personalization. It means delivering platforms that advise the customer based on all available data, making the user journey smarter and more rewarding.

Customers Hold the Secret to Your Success

Every banker throughout history knows the way to build a successful financial services business is to deeply understand the customer and the customers’ needs, and then deliver on those needs. (Actually, every successful business knows this. Not just financial services.)

- See more at: https://thefinancialbrand.com/63360/digital-banking-design-relationship-experience/