Why are other financial institutions and Fintechs walking away with your customers?

It’s all in the mix — and the data.

The innovative banks and fintechs are winning. Customers, both retail and business, are turning to them for personal reasons. They want their bank to be their partner in financial life, both online and off. They want an experience that gives both the personal touch and convenience.

Banking customers want a service mix that’s right for them. They really want to be able to tell others about how they found:

An easy — and pleasant! — account opening and onboarding process without appointments and with digital tools

A banker who makes them feel good about asking advice

A proactive service that offers financial counsel and help when they need it — even before they ask

Providing these things will move the needle on acquisition and retention.

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Why it matters?

75% of respondents said they would purchase additional products if they felt their bank knew them better.

Source: Barlow Research Associates
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How do you make it happen?

A big part has to do with making the best use of customer data. The challenge is that the data is often difficult to access, integrate, and view in a way that leads to breakthroughs at the customer end. Data is everywhere, hidden in silos within the organization, needing to be wrangled, processed, and unified from:

Legacy core systems

Customer information and marketing systems

Data warehouses

Loan origination, account opening, and onboarding systems

There’s even data locked in the heads of employees that would improve performance if others only knew about it.

How many companies?

According to Gartner, "Plenty of CEOs want to transform their businesses: Two-thirds say they expect their companies to significantly change their business models in response to digital technologies." ²

But don’t think of it as an end on its own. Transformation is a powerful tool to give you:

A deeper view into customer needs and wants through better-coordinated data

More agility, so you’re prepared when customer needs and market priorities shift

Infinite scalability without capital investment for cost efficiency

Reduced risk of threats and regulatory issues through improved security and streamlined compliance

More efficient ways to identify new opportunities, enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)


 

These are what we’ll be talking about in the following sections.

We’ll look at the unique new innovations Bottomline has developed to go beyond the basics of digital transformation and get ahead of customer needs to:

Make sure everyone knows who they’re helping by unifying the banking data environment

Keep improving performance and tweak — or renovate — wherever it makes sense

Move the needle on customer relationships with AI-driven recommendations and insights that reps can act on

Start seeing results quickly by making sure new tools are easy for bank employees to adopt

IDC predicts that 90% of enterprises will have multiple cloud services and platforms by 2020³

Seeking an ideal experience

What banking data silos look like from a customer standpoint

It’s one of the truisms of the mobile age: Customers expect more. Amazon, Zappos, Uber, you name it — customers have seen what is possible, and they know we can do better. In fact, according to Celent, 82% of banking executives say that customer expectations outpace internal adaptations.4 We’re not keeping up. And customers are feeling it. They often find their banking experience less exhilarating than frustrating, and for good reasons:

Opening new accounts and getting onboarded is a laborious and painful experience

Often it requires an appointment at the bank location. In this mobile age, digital onboarding makes this a very solvable issue.

Getting started with an account is riddled with details that get missed — another cardinal sin

Onboarding should be the time to cement the relationship. Customers want the right service mix. They need to know that they can still speak to someone if necessary, but have the option of digital paperwork that’s automated online rather than physical paper.

Too often, they are not introduced to automatic bill pay, mobile banking, direct deposit, and other services—online and off—that are proven to increase stickiness dramatically and drive customer satisfaction.

Bank representatives don't have the tools to really know their customers

It’s all about accessing the information that can help banking customers become successful in their finances. That’s often simply because the right data on life triggers, financial position, and other potential opportunities isn’t readily available to the bank representative.

Finally, the principle ingredient for personal service isn't available: time

Too often, bank relationship advisors don’t have the time to provide error-free, frustration-free service because their time needs to be spent wrangling data, so they can’t focus on what matters. And that’s when the customers start leaving.

Getting closer to the customer

The four basic elements of holistic banking engagement

So, we know what the problem looks like. Let’s dive into what it will take to fix it. To acquire, onboard, and retain more customers, banks need an approach that effectively combines four elements.

1. Deep customer understanding to drive the relationship

Bank employees don’t have time to hunt down the key data on each customer for retention. They need a holistic view of the customer through a single, easy dashboard. Using that dashboard, and a little familiarity with the customer, they have the tools they need.

Bottomline Digital Banking IQ™ provides this single, digestible view with the Relationship Navigator. It gathers information and data from across the organization as well as multiple software tools and combines them to enable a complete understanding of the customer to fuel the trigger actions mentioned above.

Using predictive AI as Digital Banking IQ does, you can more quickly and efficiently connect the dots and recommend the best next step actions, offer the right products, and find more opportunities for conversations.

In addition, by using AI to identify behavior patterns and triggers, reps can more easily see new opportunities to benefit both the customer's life and the bank's performance.

When you know the customer better out of the gate, you can tailor their experience to their needs and desires. Like any good concierge experience, this builds trust. Which leads to more referrals and more customers.ies for conversations. In addition, by using AI to identify behavior.

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2. Data integrity and targeted insights to empower your employees

When the data on customers is relevant, accessible, and intelligently curated as it is with Digital Banking IQ, employees can make better decisions on the most important customer financial events and the best recommendations, leads, and referrals. And when that information all comes from a single customer view, bank managers and employees can offer tailored solutions.

Plus, this puts the whole team on the same page for each customer, creating a more consistent and positive customer experience while increasing the speed of customer service.

Digital Banking IQ has been shown to increase time spent with customers from only 20% to 70%.

3. A simple and intuitive interface for greater productivity

Speaking of that single source of truth on each customer, employees are coming to expect that level of functionality from their tools. Remember, this is the age of Apple, Amazon, and Zappos. Highly intuitive tools are proven to improve performance.

An interface like Bottomline Digital Banking IQ, one that is simple and useful to the employee, has been shown to increase user adoption by two times and accelerate the speed of deployment by three times. You’ll also find the time spent on real customer service can increase dramatically.

"It's like my iPhone: It just works"

- Banker at a financial firm with over $5 billion in assets
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4. High adoption with fast deployment times (deep functionality out of the box)

Even with a simple interface, clear benefits to employees and customers, and the right data easily available, your employees will need to embrace and use the system if it is to make a real positive impact. With Digital Banking IQ, they do. And that’s not just theory. Digital Banking IQ adoption rates are over 70%, while industry averages for bank system adoptions hover at 30%.

The fact that Bottomline Digital Banking IQ is easy to learn also lowers training time. This, along with low maintenance costs and other factors, contributes to a remarkably low total cost of ownership.

Digital Banking IQ cuts total cost of ownership in half compared with other systems.

Make it cool

Built on MicrosoftAzure and enhanced by power platform

It’s a lot to ask. How do you achieve all this relevant and timely information delivery in an easy, single view that enables employees to be as successful as possible? The answer: You build it on a cool — and familiar — platform.

Bottomline Digital Banking IQ runs on Microsoft Azure using the power platform

That offers advantages on many levels. The Azure environment ensures that you get the virtually infinite scalability of the Azure cloud along with the agility to change course or add capacity instantly and without high capital expense. You also enjoy the world-class security and compliance of Microsoft’s flagship cloud environment.

Power Platform is definitely something new—we believe it’s part of why BankSight (Now Bottomline Digital Banking IQ Insights) was named a Cool Vendor in the “Cool Vendors in AI for Banking and Investment Services” report by technology firm, Gartner, Inc.5 The report focuses on highlighting new, interesting, and innovative vendors, products, and services.

Banks are looking at ways to improve customer experience via the usage of the artificial intelligence suite of technologies. We identify emerging vendors using AI-based technologies for banking and investment services that technology and service providers seeking to develop tools should watch.

“Cool Vendors in AI for Banking and Investment Services,” Gartner Inc

 

Power Platform unifies the capabilities of three of Microsoft’s most useful programs, giving you a more efficient way to bring data to the apps and apps to the data. It includes:

Microsoft Power BI, the familiar self-service business intelligence (BI) app.

Power BI connects and analyzes business data and presents elegant graphical visualizations on-screen. For easy integration, Power BI supports 43 languages, and the data it ingests can come from an Excel spreadsheet or a SharePoint list, from an Oracle database or an SAP or Salesforce application.

Microsoft Powerapps, the citizen application development platform.

Using PowerApps, anyone can build web and mobile applications without writing code. The natural connection between Power BI and PowerApps allows users to put insights from Power BI in the hands of workers on the frontline to customize as they need, empowering them to do what works.

Microsoft Flow, the self-service automation tool.

Using Flow, users can easily automate simple tasks and reduce operational errors by creating automated workflows with robotic process automation (RPA).

Combining these powerful tools in the secure, agile, and scalable Azure environment enables you to unify the myriad data sources currently siloed across your bank into a focused view of each customer for all the things you need to win the battle for primary ownership of the customer relationship:

A consumer-grade customer experience

Streamlined banking customer data management

Reduced maintenance with greater configurability to tailor the solution to your needs

Artificial intelligence applied to bring value specifically to your bank

Visibility of results and data from the customer rep to the C-suite

Fast deployment, high adoption, and low risk

Integration with familiar and easy-to-use Microsoft systems, resulting in minimal training needs

CASE STUDY

Judo Bank

An innovative bank

Judo Bank is an innovative, 100% digital lender in Australia, founded in 2016 by veteran bankers to transform business banking through a relationship-centric, digital approach.

A partnership from the ground up

Right from the start, Judo partnered with Bottomline, and within six months they had created a comprehensive single view of financial and nonfinancial relationship information for customers and prospects. They were also able to launch an innovative end-to-end digital process for their collaborative leads and a referrals process across any channel. Launched in 2017, these innovative systems have already shown dramatic results for Judo and its customers.

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Full loan decisioning in fewer than 5 business days

With the unique digital collaboration between brokers, small business customers, and Judo relationship lenders, Bottomline's modern digital user experience enables Judo to provide a credit decision for every prospect within 5 business days. The industry standard for this is about 15 business days.

More time spent with customers, less with computers

Since implementing Bottomline Digital Banking IQ Insights, Judo has seen the ratio of time spent with customers to time spent with the system increase from 20% to 70%.

Complete control of customer experience, all the way to settlement

Without a middle office, Judo lenders now have more visibility and control to deliver significant operational quality benefits and cost savings.

A unified system for lenders

Rather than forcing lenders to waste time logging in and rekeying information dozens of times for different systems, Judo has a consolidated system, which frees more time for added-value and customer service.

The tools to get closer to your customers

Designed by bankers, for bankers, Bottomline Digital Banking IQ arms you with actionable recommendations and timely financial alerts to help proactively engage with and serve banking customers. Because it is built on the Microsoft Azure cloud, it takes full advantage of the fast adoption rates and functionality of Microsoft’s Power Platform, including Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow.

Explore the solution

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GET IN TOUCH

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