Extending value across the customer journey using digital learning – tips for digital banks

Retail banks have long competed on distribution, realising economies of scale through network effects and investments in brand and infrastructure. But even those scale economies had limits above a certain size. As a result, in most retail-banking markets, a few large institutions, operating at similar efficiency ratios, dominate market share.

Retail banks have also not kept pace with the improvements in customer experience seen in other consumer industries, only a few banks stand out for innovation in customer interaction models or branch formats. Marketing investments have traditionally focused on brand building and increasing loyalty: a reputable brand stood for trust and security and became a moat, providing protection against new entrants to the sector. In this blog, I want to talk about the 3 stages where extending value across the customer journey using digital learning will not only lead to improved adoption but also deepen the relationship and capture more revenue.

Awareness stage

Retail-banking branch networks are contracting across Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom. The rate of branch reduction is often tied to customer willingness to purchase banking products online or on mobile devices. According to research by McKinsey, 80 to 90 percent of banking customers in the Nordics, for example, are open to digital product purchases for most financial products, compared to 50 to 60 percent in North America and Southern Europe. Now how do you convince these people to join your digital bank? Is it trust issues with mobiles? Bad customer service? Step one is to research what makes them reticent. Step two is dismantling their worries. This can be achieved through short educational videos demonstrating how you’re tackling these issues.

Sign up

At the stage of sign up, you need to make sure the user knows how to find their way around your app and that they are making the most of your offering. This is the first step in demonstrating care. A demo video showing how to navigate the digital platform is a good idea, authoring tools such as Articulate 360 make it extremely easy to capture your screen, add voiceover or graphics. You can also create characters that help guide the customer through new features/products that you will be launching in Vyond.

Retention

For most consumers, working with a bank is just a means to an end: ensuring a secure retirement, growing a business, or buying a home, for example. Most banks, however, tend to focus only on discrete, bank-centered moments in the customer’s overall journey, such as offering a mortgage, when the customer’s larger goal is buying the house. Banks have huge potential to grow by engaging with consumers during all stages of their decision journey. For example, by offering digital learning modules to customers on how to better manage their retirement pot, steps involved in buying a home, or how to determine the best rates and maturities for financial instruments. Banks should consider this option if they have significant market share in financial products that are integral to a larger buying process. Engaging across buying journeys can allow banks in such a position to gain access to a larger pool of potential revenue and also enrich the overall relationship with their customers.

Most of the ideas above require a mix of digital learning and marketing skills but they show how impactful digital learning can be in extending value across the customer journey. Has your company adapted digital learning to other uses than just training your staff?