Today, customers expect their financial institutions to provide seamless service whenever and wherever they choose. They want self-service convenience, 24/7 availability, frictionless fulfillment and services, protection from fraud, financial advisory assistance, and access to branch and contact center staff. They want their FIs to know them and help them meet their needs.

Customers expect to sign in to existing online accounts and have the system automatically populate applications, call the contact center and pick up the conversation where they left off, or start an application on their phone and finish it in the branch. They don’t want to say or re-enter the same data over and over, strictly use one channel for a specific activity, or engage multiple systems to complete a single transaction. Ignore these expectations, and you risk losing customers.

While many FIs may have all the needed systems and apps in place, they may not easily communicate with cross-channel, context-specific information when confronted with a customer need. Two-way cross-channel communications may resolve some customer interaction problems, but to truly be successful, FIs need an automated solution that creates a true Omni-channel environment. This open movement enables FIs to access data, interact with any channel, and fulfill banking and customer needs.

With customer data and interactions flowing between a financial institution’s systems, apps, and channels, the organization gains more data for analysis and can build a more complete picture of customer preferences, behaviors, and needs in order to make better, customer-based decisions and personalize engagement.

These insights also enable FIs to:

• Enhance customer experience.
• Incorporate customer insights.
• Increase acquisition and retention and upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Anticipate customer behaviors.
• Start, stop, and resume applications anywhere.
• Incorporate analytics-based customer engagement programs.
• Increase employee productivity.
• Detect and mitigate risk.

Implementing an Omni-channel delivery system enables FIs to provide a true Omni customer experience while gaining a more detailed, accurate picture of customer needs, preferences, and behaviors to engage with relevant and timely actions and communication, ultimately creating a more successful organization.

Download ARGO’s Engaging Customers in an Omni-Delivery Ecosystem Interview Brief.