The world of banking is changing rapidly. Customers are not as loyal as they used to be. They have more options, and they demand easy seamless banking experiences.
To attract and retain customers, banks need to understand their customers’ journeys, and they need to ensure the journeys are satisfying to navigate. This requires the right approach to fraud prevention and detection. Here is what banks need to consider.
The Customer Journey in Banking
Financial institutions serve a vast range of customers, more than almost any other type of business. While many businesses appeal to niche audiences, everyone needs financial services. By extension, banks need to map out multiple customer journeys.
For instance, one banking customer may prefer to do everything online from account opening to applying for loans. These customers won’t hesitate to download a banking app or add mobile pay to their phones. Another customer may prefer to do the majority of their banking in person. They may perceive online or mobile banking as risky and complicated.
You need to understand all of these different types of customers, and you need to know how their journeys are likely to go.
Mapping the Customer Journey
Mapping the customer journey typically starts by creating a persona and then identifying how that persona navigates their relationship with your bank. Imagine for example that a new parent is looking for a savings account for their child. They are relatively well educated with a moderate income.
Your journey map for this persona should detail every touchpoint this customer is going to have with your bank. Which brochures are they going to read? What part of your website will they visit? Will they talk with a personal banker? What questions will they ask? What answers do they want or need to hear? These are the types of questions to consider as you map out their initial contact with the bank.
Then, you need to consider the account opening process and what happens after that. This customer, for example, may want to open a college savings account for their child. They may want to apply for loans. They may want a debit card for their child eventually. Again, every customer will take a different journey through your bank.
Friction in the Customer Journey
Customers want an easy journey. They don’t want to deal with friction. They don’t want to face unnecessary roadblocks or delays. There are numerous ways to reduce friction in the customer journey. They can range from ensuring that your website loads quickly to providing a debit card immediately when an account is opened in person.
Fraud prevention, unfortunately, can place unnecessary friction in the customer journey. You have to protect your financial institution against the growing threat of fraud. But you don’t want to do so in a way that impedes the customer journey.
Reducing Fraud in the Customer Journey
To reduce fraud at every point of the customer journey, you need to understand the unique fraud risks at each touchpoint. The fraud risks associated with opening an account, for example, differ from the risks related to payment fraud, check fraud, loan fraud, or other types of fraud.
Then, you need to implement a fraud detection process that doesn’t impede the customer from taking legitimate actions. This requires a fraud detection and prevention solution that runs in the background and uses behavioral learning to reduce the risk of false positives.
Effective fraud prevention solutions don’t rely on archaic rule-based fraud detection methods. Instead, they use artificial intelligence to look at multiple data points and spot the most likely incidences of fraud. They also use machine learning to improve their fraud detection abilities over time.
These solutions learn about the differences between fraudulent and legitimate behavior in general, but they also learn about how your customers act in particular. They know that an action by one customer may be an indicator of fraud, but that same action by another customer is likely to be completely legitimate.
What journey are your customers on? Have you mapped it? Do you understand all of the personas who use your financial institution? What type of fraud are they likely to face at the different points of their journeys? These are the types of questions you need to answer if you want to improve the customer journey and experience for your customers.
We can help you address the fraud aspect of the customer journey. At SQN Banking Systems, we offer fraud prevention and detection solutions that reduce fraud while protecting the customer experience. To compete in today’s market, you need the right approach to fraud. To learn more, contact us today.