How to Turn Every Teller Transaction Into a Mobile App Download
For most people, it’s hard to imagine a life before the ATM. But there was a time where depositing and withdrawing cash was a painful process that required paper, pen and a lengthy interaction with a teller. Today, ATMs provide users with incredible value in minutes — and with Accenture projecting there will be 3.5 million ATMs in existence by 2020 — transactional banking activities have become easier than ever before.
While the ATM completely revolutionized banking by automating low-value transactions like depositing checks and withdrawing cash, the potential for mobile apps to provide value while freeing up banking associates to focus on high-value activities is exponentially higher.
Mobile Applications Drive Efficiency and Positive Brand Sentiment For Banks
Consider all the efficiencies introduced by ATMs — for customers as well as banks. Now consider how much more of an impact is possible with mobile. While ATMs increased the physical reach of a bank’s brand, reduced the burden on staff to manage low-value transactional interactions and cut costs by as much as 90 percent in high traffic areas, mobile applications are an even lower cost way to ensure your brand is always with the customer.
Mobile applications are high-engagement, low-risk ways to support customers through a variety of daily needs. Need to check a balance? Need to request a credit increase or pay a bill? Need to report a stolen card? All of these activities — which used to require a 30 minute phone call and potential for frustration — can now be accomplished in minutes, and on the customer’s own time.
Reliable, robust mobile apps do more than drive efficiency, they increase the frequency of brand exposure with customers, and give you an opportunity to provide exceptional customer support to increase brand sentiment and CSAT with minimal investment. Additionally, mobile banking users bring in 72 percent more revenue than other customers, so they are an incredibly valuable segment of the market.
Given that 77 percent of customers still feel that banks don’t meet their expectations, providing new channels of engagement is crucial. And the more low-value, transactional activities you can take off the plate of your in-branch staff, the more opportunities they have to focus on the high-value advisory activities that are indispensable to your customers.
If you provide easy, convenient and reliable brand experiences on the day-to-day via your mobile application, your customers will be much more likely to come to you when it’s time to make larger purchasing decisions — like buying a house or taking out a college loan. The only trick is you need ways to drive customers to the app in the first place.
How Banks Can Drive Adoption For Mobile Applications
With a good mobile app and well-run ATMs, it’s easy to ensure a positive brand experience in the majority of transactional banking use cases. And while 67 percent of tech-savvy millennials may be quick to download your app, you must educate aging customer segments about the usefulness and security of banking technology. This is where the physical branch can be a great marketing tool.
The physical bank provides your brand an opportunity to build and nurture customer relationships with high touch, high value interactions, as well as the opportunity to educate customers about the breadth of digital services your brand provides. For less tech-savvy customer segments, the branch is where the majority of banking happens. And if you can shift these customers toward a more digital experience for their day-to-day transactional activities, you can focus on providing a more focused, and better customer experience for the high-value engagements that must occur in the bank.
This is where technologies like humanoid robots have proven indispensable as educational marketing tools that can help in-branch customers learn about the value of your mobile applications and ancillary services. SoftBank’s Pepper is one such robot that is being used by banks around the world to engage customers, while helping drive adoption for mobile applications and more.
How Pepper Drives Adoption For Mobile
Pepper is a friendly humanoid that attracts the attention of every customer entering your bank. He disarms and engages customers while turning every interaction into an opportunity. For example, as customers are waiting to talk to a financial advisor about loans, mortgages or a college savings account, they can engage with Pepper about the variety of conveniences your mobile application provides.
With the ability to identify and proactively reach out to guests to ask questions about their banking needs, entice them with special promotions, engage them with games and music and capture phone numbers and email addresses, Pepper creates a positive brand sentiment with guests in the bank, educates customers about your mobile application and drives a call to action — all while freeing up your tellers to focus on high-value transactions.
How Can I Use Pepper In My Bank?
While adopting new technology can seem intimidating, it’s actually easy to get started with Pepper. He requires no engineering resources, and is easy enough to use that marketers can self-setup a plethora of campaigns that can be tested and switched out rapidly. This allows banks to change their content based on current promotions, or even local preferences.
The ability to run creative promotional campaigns about your mobile application — with a form factor that gets attention — gives banks an enormous opportunity to drive mobile application downloads, without turning your tellers into salespeople, or negatively impacting the in-branch experience.
To learn more about how you can use Pepper to drive adoption for your mobile application, and encourage customers to participate with your brand anytime — anywhere — click the link below.
