Ways to Enhance Customer Experience in Digital Lending

Until recently, consumer lending involved outdated loan origination and approval processes with a long paper trail and high turnaround times. This often increased costs and impacted the customer experience. The online loan application experience often followed the same pattern as the offline counterpart. The outcome was redundant and inefficient processes, far from optimized lending solutions.

Fast forward to current times, user-centric design-thinking has inspired lenders to leverage digital platforms to enhance the customer experience. Digitization of lending platforms is the key to customer value propositions. Digital lending allows integration of new data sources and reworks internal and customer workflows for a frictionless lending experience for customers. Use of robotics, interactive web applications and video chats offer the same benefits as face to face interaction and add distinct value to the overall customer experience.

Artificial Intelligence-powered processes furnish personalized suggestions in a cost-effective manner, ultimately assisting consumers to understand viable loan options based on their personal financial situations. Digitization of lending processing helps lenders reduce the cost of customer acquisition and even improves retention rates. Lending businesses have been swift to understand the importance of customer experience as a winning factor for their success.

As a result, numerous lending businesses are proactively leveraging the opportunity to drive efficiencies, manage credit risks, and improve the way they serve their customers.

Ways to Enhance Customer Experience in Digital Lending

Clearly, the ‘instant gratification’ seeking millennials have marked differences in terms of consumer ideologies and behaviours compared to the previous generation. They are technology savvy and new-age business need to leverage this connection to increase their business. To stay on the top of the game, lending businesses need to embrace digital platforms and lookout for ways to serve the customer in the best possible ways.

Tip 1:# Analytics Aided Data Collection

We are guilty of being a mobile-first generation with more than half of the web traffic being generated by mobile platforms. Consequently, digital services drive user engagement for businesses through the roof. Add to it the trail of digital data points and you have large volumes of customer data that can be smartly leveraged by financial companies. Lenders have a unique opportunity where they can actively analyze the spending habits and repayment schedules of users and profile them with unprecedented accuracy.

Great customer experience begins with understanding what customers want. It is crucial to gather feedback across all channels to discover opportunities for improvement. Lending companies map out their customer’s journeys to identify all touchpoints across all channels and then leverage it to engage effectively with them.

Data analytics can then help lenders deliver superior customer experience at a fraction of the cost. Leveraging data helps them understand the customer and build the proper customer journey view.

Tip 2:# Allow Customers to Self Service

Modern consumers are more self-reliant than they get credit for. Digital services condition them to prefer the ‘D-I-Y’ methodology which they find more convenient and efficient to use. Despite this, most digital lending businesses don’t leverage self-service support or interactive chatbots to answer FAQs. They lead consumers to either call customer service, head into a branch or simply give up on what it is they are trying to accomplish.

Borrowers need more than just necessary product information and the convenience of being able to execute transactions. They need answers to support related questions through content across platforms. Allowing such self-service capabilities improves consumer satisfaction levels, customer retention, and increases conversion rates.

Tip 3:# Maintain Consistency Across All Touch Points

An omnichannel experience helps lenders stay competitive in the customer experience game. NBFCs need to continue building channel capabilities to ensure seamless, round the clock support for customer queries. Lenders often face trouble in providing consistent and accurate information across channels.

However, new age borrowers are proficiently banking online, through their mobile or tablet devices and even accessing branch offices virtually. People using digital lending services often switch between devices before completing the activity. Successful digital lending customer experiences are the ones that deliver a truly seamless multichannel experience.

Tip 4:# Adopt Financial Technology

Lending companies often find themselves struggling to comply with strict regulations and meeting customer demand for on-the-go services. The time is ripe for catching up with advances in technology so that lenders can find great opportunities to improve their customer satisfaction. Integrating mobile payment options and enhancing the security of platforms using biometrics, such as voice identification and eye scanning are a few stellar examples of how digital technology can help lending business in appeasing customers in different ways.

Tip 5:# Curate Personalized Customer Experiences

Borrowers today are spoilt for choice when it comes to loan applications. Lending institutions need to build trust in borrowers to stay competitive. Personalization and segmentation of both messaging and services are crucial to achieving a customer’s trust. The focus needs to remain on high-quality products that meet customer needs. Lending institutions need to leverage customer data to capture untapped opportunities for personalization.

Personalization of messaging and services make the customers feel more valued, increasing their engagement. Marketing automation tools such as CRM systems come with lead scoring and robust email marketing capabilities that can be personalized adequately to serve different market segments. Lending companies can also allow Individualized interactions based on customer communication preferences. Offering a personalized experience to customers means allowing them the ability to access the information they need immediately.

Conclusion

Digital solutions allow lending companies to reach customers who were not able to access financial services in the past. New-age digital innovations have mitigated challenges related to geography, higher transaction costs, and transparency. However, intense competition in the field makes it increasingly difficult for companies to differentiate their offerings. This is precisely where superior customer experience comes to play.

The age of digital lending is redefining financial empowerment through refining customer experience. It is time for lenders to tap into ever-changing customer expectations, leverage emerging technological capabilities and adapt to shifting market conditions, to stay a step ahead from their competitors.

Finezaa allows digital lending experiences with real-time accountability and ensures a superior customer experience. To be the best in the digital lending space, lenders must understand and respond to a customer’s personal needs, support them through the journey, and add valuable inputs that help them manage their financial health.