In today’s competitive banking landscape, effective customer engagement is paramount for building lasting relationships and fostering loyalty. As customers increasingly demand personalised and seamless experiences, banks must adapt by embracing innovative strategies.
This blog post explores 2 essential strategies for driving effective customer engagement in this context – both of which are easy ways to benefit from AI.
1. Adopt an omni-channel approach to customer communication
In the digital age – and with a dwindling number of high street branches – customers interact with banks through many channels, including app, website, social media, email and WhatsApp. The key to success amid this diversity is to ensure all these channels work together – so no matter how they contact you, customers get a connected experience.
Start with these 4 areas:
• Real-time responsiveness – Implement real-time communication capabilities to address customer queries and concerns promptly. Chatbots and AI-driven customer service tools can be instrumental in delivering responses in the moment
• Seamless integration – Ensure all channels seamlessly integrate to provide a consistent and unified experience. This means customers can start an interaction on one channel and continue it on another without disruption. For example, if they start with a chatbot and need to speak to someone in the call centre, the agent can see the chat history (avoiding the need for frustrating repetition)
• Personalised messaging – Tailor messages to the channel as well as the customer. AI-powered analytics can determine which channels your customers prefer for specific content types and then enable personalisation at scale. For example, for a specific customer, what services and products are best promoted via email or letter vs SMS and WhatsApp?
• Proactive fraud management – Integrate customer communication channels with real-time fraud alert triggers from your third-party systems. That way, customers get notifications via the best channel for them, ensuring a faster response. As an example, we’ve helped banks reduce the end-to-end process from 45 minutes to 5 minutes.
2. Analyse customer insights and create behavioural triggers
Understanding your customers’ behaviours and preferences is the foundation of effective engagement. To achieve this, you should harness customer insights and use AI to create behavioural triggers:
• Whole journey analytics – Use data analytics tools that gather and collectively analyse customer data from various touchpoints. This data should encompass transaction history, browsing behaviour and demographic information. This gives you an all-encompassing view of customer behaviour, which AI tools can draw on to keep customer journeys on track and pre-empt drop-off points
• Behavioural triggers – Identify key customer behaviours that indicate specific needs or opportunities. For example, if a customer frequently checks their savings account balance, it may indicate an interest in investments or savings plans.
• Personalised recommendations – Use those behavioural triggers with AI to proactively offer personalised recommendations and next best offers. For instance, if a customer often withdraws cash abroad, recommend a travel-friendly credit card with lower foreign transaction fees.
• Automated campaigns – Implement automated marketing campaigns that leverage behavioural triggers. For instance, send a personalised email or app notification when a customer’s account balance reaches a certain threshold or when there’s a special offer aligned with their interests.
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By integrating AI tools with an omni-channel approach to communication and customer insights, you can provide more efficient and effective customer service at scale.
See how Engage Hub is helping banks use AI to speed up onboarding processes, comply with regulations like Consumer Duty, prevent fraud and boost customer satisfaction metrics.
