Personalization is Crucial for Customer Engagement at Banks

Personalization is a priority to consumers in banking, making customer engagement an imperative, according to The State of Retail Banking: Consumer Survey 2016 released by TimeTrade.

What’s more, the report reveals that consumers yearn for in-person interactions, admitting they do not yet have confidence in a fully automated branch and prefer to have a teller on hand to help them.

Almost half (43%) of consumers want to visit their branch, and do so at least 10 times per year.

According to the report, due to the value of in-person banking interactions, cross-selling is a major opportunity. But, cross-selling must also be embedded in the corporate culture to truly be effective.

Here are some more key findings from the report:

-Products and services are some of the top priorities for banking consumers: Location and hours are most important to consumers when choosing a bank, followed by products and services.

-Convenience and personalization are important to consumers: Convenient location and personalized service are the factors most important to respondents when they visit their branch.

-Insurance and wealth management are the least likely added bank service: Insurance and wealth management are the added bank services that consumers use the least. This indicates that these services are undersold and there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of cross-selling them.

-Consumers still want to meet a bank specialist in person at the bank: When asked how they would like to interact with their financial institution, 57% say they would like to interact with their bank in-person at the branch.

-Consumers are not ready for fully automated branches: When banking consumers were asked how they felt about experimental bank branches that have no tellers and every transaction is automated, more than half would still like the option of being able to talk to a teller.

-Drivers for in-branch visits require assistance: 78% of the reasons consumers come into the branch require assistance from a specialist.

-Added bank services that consumers use most: Besides checking and savings, the bank services that consumers use most are notary, followed by car loans and mortgages

-The younger demographics want to interact with their bank over a mobile device: When broken down by demographic, Millennials and Gen Z are the age groups that most prefer to interact with their bank on their smartphone via a mobile app.

-Consumers are willing to schedule an appointment to meet with a bank specialist: The majority of survey respondents would be willing to schedule an appointment to meet with a specialist in the branch. 

-Consumers are willing to bank off-peak hours if given an incentive: An overwhelming majority of consumers would be willing to come into the bank during off-peak times if an incentive were provided.

-Consumers are willing to take a 5-question post-visit survey: An overwhelming majority of consumers are willing to take a 5-question survey after they visit their local branch.

-Email surveys are the most desired: The majority of consumers are willing to answer the post-visit survey via email followed by text/SMS.

-Time is of the essence: 64% of respondents indicate they are willing to wait less than 10 minutes at their bank branch.

-TimeTrade recently conducted a survey of 2,064 consumers, which asked in-depth questions regarding their perceptions and behaviors around customer experience in banking.

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