Key points:
As demand for digital banking grows, so too does demand for flexible and convenient digital experiences. Omnichannel account opening is quickly becoming a must-have for businesses and consumers alike, with 76 percent expecting an omnichannel banking experience from their financial institution and 60 percent saying they would like to see their banks blend digital and physical services.
An omnichannel approach to the account opening process enables customers, members, and businesses to move between various digital channels during their application. This would allow a customer to begin their application on their smartphone, for example, but switch to an alternate channel (such as their desktop) without losing their progress or having a negative customer experience.
Omnichannel represents a more streamlined and convenient account opening experience for consumers, business owners, and financial institutions alike.
But what ties these various channels together?
The banker-facing console.
The banker-facing console is the hub through which all applicant information passes. Whether applicants are opening an account in branch, online, via mobile, or through a combination of channels, the banker-facing console affords relationship managers crucial visibility as well as the tools to troubleshoot or expedite applications.
Through the banker-facing console, relationship managers are able to view, track, and advance individual applications, as well as gain essential insights into aspects of their institution’s account opening process. This might include visibility into the number of applications received in any given time period, applicant locations, and common drop-off points during the application process.
These insights can inform decision-making, particularly in marketing. For instance, demographic data shown in the banker-facing console might be used to refine the target audience in a marketing campaign.
The banker-facing console is necessary to provide a truly convenient, flexible, and high-quality omnichannel account opening experience—which consumers and business owners share a strong, sweeping demand for. An Accenture study revealed that 50 percent of customers would prefer the ability to switch between online and phone channels during a transaction, while 60 percent would like to see their banks blend physical and digital services together.
The banker-facing console empowers FIs to meet this demand, without compromise.
The banker-facing console plays an essential role in overcoming the challenges associated with offering omnichannel account opening, such as maintaining visibility over the application process.
An effective banker-facing console can help you tackle the following challenges, while improving customer experience, employee satisfaction, and the efficiency of the account opening process.
As consumers and businesses alike become increasingly accustomed to the flexibility of digital experiences, FI employees must be able to maintain visibility and control over applications.
A banker-facing console provides improved visibility and management capabilities for branch employees, enabling digital branch managers to view and manage applications in real time. The console can offer crucial insights, like at what point a customer dropped off in the application.
Insight into application drop-off might help bank staff identify a lack of clarity in the application process that is causing application abandonment, so they can correct it, or reveal where they might offer individual customers additional support in completing their applications. A follow-up call with a bank employee may be all that’s needed to motivate a customer to continue their application.
These features empower branch employees to meet the demand for digital with greater control over the process. It also allows FIs to leverage the benefits of best-in-class digital tools, like speed, strategic flexibility, and improved transparency, in branches. These benefits play an important part in creating a truly omnichannel experience for customers—one that allows them to move between digital channels and in-branch experiences without losing their progress.
Omnichannel offers your customers flexibility and convenience, both of which are in high demand in banking. But it also multiplies the number of varying customer journeys, which results in complex data sets. A banker-facing console mitigates this complexity by allowing you to aggregate and analyze data through a single, intelligent hub.
A banker-facing console consolidates important application insights and the general success of the account opening process.
This might include insights into the following:
By providing a higher level of visibility, granularity, and data access, the console empowers you to make informed decisions for your financial institution, such as adapting the application process to improve conversion rates or targeting specific customer segments with unique offers.
Ultimately, the analytics available in a banker-facing console enable you to aggregate data on applicants, identify pain points in the application process, assess risk and compliance outcomes, track and advance individual applications, and leverage funding data in decision-making. Equipping your financial institution with this information will enable you to better understand customer preferences and compete more effectively in the digital space.
Applications that happen across multiple channels can be notoriously difficult to track. A banker-facing console can enable banks and credit unions to view individual applications. This allows bank staff to assess application progress, see which fields have yet to be completed, and determine if there are any additional due diligence questions that they may need to ask the applicant.
In the event that an applicant has uploaded the incorrect documents, for example, application tracking and visibility equip bank staff with the information needed to follow up with the applicant. This gives staff the opportunity to advise applicants who may need additional support. By enabling proactive intervention of this nature, banks and credit unions can significantly reduce application abandonment rates.
Given that omnichannel allows applicants to leave an application and return to it on an alternate device, this level of visibility is highly beneficial to bank staff—allowing them to track applicant progress even when they move between channels.
Safeguarding and improving employee experience is a key challenge for FIs hoping to reduce staff turnover and attract top talent. But to effectively oversee and manage potentially thousands of applications each month, employees must be equipped with the necessary tools to make their workload manageable.
A banker-facing console ensures that the omnichannel account opening platform employees are interacting with is simple, accessible, and automates as many repetitive processes as possible. These features are especially important in the event that key staff leave the organization, go on vacation, or are out sick, requiring that other staff be onboarded quickly.
A banker-facing console can considerably simplify the process of managing omnichannel applications by providing in-depth analytics and clear visibility. In the event that a team member is unavailable, the user-friendliness of the banker-facing console ensures that responsibility for overseeing the banker-facing console can be passed to another member of the team seamlessly, and that initial training is quick and efficient.
Ultimately, an intuitive and user-friendly console preserves employee satisfaction and can help your FI attract and retain the best talent.
Community FIs also face the challenge of making modifications to the application process and customer-facing product pages when necessary. In some cases, this can require FI staff to file a support ticket, then wait for their vendor support team to make the required changes.
A banker-facing console that allows for no-code, real-time modifications enables you to achieve this in just a few clicks. You could, for instance, update the customer-facing copy on your “Apply Now” webpage from within the banker-facing console to reflect a change made to the application process, or minimum deposit requirements.
A truly omnichannel experience that delivers the convenience and flexibility customers and businesses are demanding from their financial institutions depends on a banker-facing console.
As the hub through which all applications pass, a banker-facing console that maximizes visibility and empowers bank staff to create a simple, flexible, and delightful account opening experience for customers is essential.
The MANTL banker-facing console, which is offered as part of our consumer account opening and business account opening products, is a game-changing feature for financial institutions looking to implement omnichannel. This console was designed specifically to address the challenges listed in this article.
The MANTL banker-facing console checks all the boxes. It provides improved visibility and control for branch employees, allows for real-time modifications, requires no coding or training, enables you to track individual applications, and provides access to invaluable data insights.
Curious about how MANTL delivers a truly omnichannel experience? Schedule a demo with us here.
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