Conversational Banking: Higher closing rates – seamless communication with customers
CREALOGIX pointed out that financial institutions can use Conversational Banking to communicate digitally with their customers and therefore ensure a seamless narrative across all channels. This can significantly improve the customer journey; for example, when offering loans to retail customers and SMEs, before deciding to accept an offer, there is an inherent need for a conversation to take place. Using retail banking as an example, they discuss how this approach can reduce effort and complexity – for both the customer and the bank. Therefore, completion rates can be significantly increased.
Home financing: choosing a bank is a decision for life
Europace, Germany’s largest transaction platform for home financing, provides detailed insights into the customer journey as well as the pains and gains of real estate buyers in its white paper entitled “Construction Financing for Millennials”. On average, buyers are 38 years old, most of them belong to Generation Y and X and are very digitally-savvy. They do not like to rely on consultants; instead they want and need to participate in the process digitally so they can make well-informed decisions that are based on knowledge.
For most people, buying real estate is the biggest investment they will make in their lives. Deciding which financing offer to take often brings with it a high level of uncertainty, fear and mistrust towards the providers. The authors of the Europace paper go on to say that “consumers want property, they don’t really want to raise finance, but they have no choice.”
So the conclusion is the earlier a bank demonstrates value to this target group as a digitally competent and trustworthy partner, the better it will position itself in the market.
Property financing within the customer journey: seamless, continuous conversation
In a normal scenario, a digitally-savvy house buyer contacts a bank by using an online calculator in order to learn about the conditions of a loan. Then, they are often asked to submit a contact form to arrange an appointment, which means they have to re-submit all the data that they already entered online. So, it is the bank that engages with the potential customer at the very outset that stands to gain a competitive advantage. Conversational banking allows this to happen seamlessly: a secure messenger system integrated into the website makes text, voice or video-based interactions possible, then an automated chat bot or a personal advisor continues the interaction, right up to the contractual offer that the bank sends the customer via the messenger as a PDF. Naturally, it is also possible to start a conversation via one of the popular messenger services such as WhatsApp, but this often does not work due to security concerns.
Read more here and download Conversational Banking Whitepaper for more insights
