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The concept of creating an Amazon-like experience has been fairly common in financial services over the years, but as banking expectations and trends continue to evolve alongside the life of modern-day consumers, is your financial institution building a better, binge-worthy banking experience?
When someone binge-watches a television show, it means that the show was engaging enough to watch many, or even all episodes, in rapid succession. Let’s explore what it takes to transcend your financial institution (FI) beyond basic banking transactions.
Stage One – The Idea: Better Banking Experiences
With lackluster experiences impacting consumer loyalty and retention efforts, and a study revealing that 59% of consumers surveyed recently acquired a financial product from a provider other than their main financial institution, banks and credit unions need a new and exciting way to secure their primary FI status.
Stage Two – The Plan: Make Them Binge-Worthy
Over time, how consumers use and manage their finances has changed significantly. And with the rapid emergence of digital-first providers like Chime® and big-name players like Amazon®, Meta®, and Apple® stepping into the space, the competition is fierce. The good news is that banks and credit unions have an advantage that other providers don’t—an ecosystem of data that shows how consumers are using their money, who they’re paying, and what they need to improve their financial well-being.
The obstacle many FIs face, however, is when it comes to easily accessing, analyzing, and interpreting these massive data sets. Think of your data as a storyline. You can follow the protagonist’s journey, use the information available to build connections and equip your FI with the tools and resources available to solve conflicts along the way.
The use of business intelligence is an effective way to unravel your data story and identify the individual needs of a consumer based on their financial behaviors and spending trends.
Stage Three – The Shoot: Delight Your Consumers
The first two stages have set the stage for this very moment. Equipped with insightful consumer data analytics, you’re now ready to start producing results.
Each consumer story will go through a series of stages—opening their first checking account, signing up for direct deposit, getting a debit card, applying for their first credit card, buying a home, saving, investing, buying a car—and each of these represents opportunities for FIs.
According to the 2023 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, 72% of consumers want immediate service, 70% expect anyone they interact with to have full context, 62% think experiences should flow naturally between both physical and digital spaces, and 62% agree that personalized recommendations are better than general ones. Additionally, Accenture’s global study cites that by taking steps to build more meaningful, personal relationships, FIs could boost revenue from primary accountholders by up to 20%.
Directing consumers to more efficient solutions that include a personalized touch is vital to building lasting relationships. Consider placing relevant campaigns in qualified applicants’ preferred channels. Leveraging individual URLs could allow those applicants to review a pre-filled application for submission, minimizing barriers in the experience from start to finish and encouraging application completion.
The way in which your FI elevates those basic banking transactions is what can make a binge-worthy experience. In fact, credit unions that have integrated data-driven business intelligence and personalized marketing into their lending initiatives have increased their return on investments in a campaign by almost 2000%.
Finding the Right Production Partner
For many financial service providers, the challenge is not necessarily the acceptance of these ideals and their impact but rather the successful transformation of complex processes across operations.
MeridianLink® is here to help. We’re committed to partnering with FIs to solve these complex problems with powerful yet practical solutions.
- MeridianLink® Insight allows FIs to easily and efficiently tap into the power of business intelligence. With dynamic dashboards and intuitive reporting, your financial institution can make better, faster, and more profitable business decisions—all while unlocking more opportunities to optimize the consumer experience.
- MeridianLink® Engage, the marketing automation solution of our multi-product digital platform, helps FIs easily create consumer profiles so you know just what your consumers need and when. FIs can efficiently target audiences with products and services tailored to their unique needs—all while monitoring the results of these revenue-driving campaigns.
Integrating these data-driven solutions into one powerful consumer engagement platform can help you build truly binge-worthy experiences, securing your primary financial institution position.
Connect with us to learn more about how MeridianLink can help you optimize engagement, maximize cross-sell yield, and drive deeper, more profitable relationships.
