Move Aside Bots, Banking Customers Want More Human Touch
Many companies have been streamlining their onboarding processes with automation and AI bots, preferring to reduce their human workforce for more challenging backend processes or retraining them for entirely new roles.
Yet, the latest ABBYY’s State of Intelligent Automation Report, indicated that consumers aren't impressed. A staggering 90% of companies lose potential customers during the digital onboarding process of customers, with the banking sector experiencing the highest rate at almost 1-in-4 dropping out.
ABBYY, an intelligent automation company, reported that ineffective digital onboarding — when people sign up for an account or service online — can result in companies losing a prospect before they even become a customer, resulting in billions of lost revenues.
Both engagement and customer experience made up 52% of the reasons customers leave in the first 90 days, with almost a third (29%) of businesses saying the most significant factor is the process was too long. Meanwhile, 26% of respondents said that identity proofing, affirmation, and having too many manual steps were critical customer pain points.
These have a direct impact on the bottom line. Respondents stated that a reduction of 50% in abandonment rate could increase customer acquisition by 29% and revenue by 26%. Based on the report, the more time-consuming and complex an onboarding process appears, the higher the dropout risk.
Several issues typically cause customer churn during the onboarding process. Some of the most common complaints include missing a human element (24%), customers repeating themselves (24%), onboarding too slow (25%), and lack of communication (25%).
All of these issues have a significant impact on revenue, with companies missing out on business opportunities (37%), losing potential customers to competition (33%), or struggling to attract new customers (31%).
However, according to ABBYY, simple measures like activating the right mix of human interaction alongside automation could resolve pain points. The report showed that streamlining and modifying the onboarding process with technology appears to dramatically improve overall customer experience by up to 43% and increase customer retention by over a third (37%).
When choosing intelligent process automation tools, respondents said process intelligence (21%) and intelligent document processing (21%) are the top two measures being planned for onboarding by businesses across all industries.
Although changes to onboarding appear to be leaning towards adding technology to current processes (44%), it is evident that human interaction still plays a key role. More than a third (34%) still plan to include human interaction during the digital onboarding process, as good customer experience is still about relationships, whether in person or online.
Image credit: iStockphoto/bashta
