As the world goes fully digital, customers now expect intuitive, seamless, and personalized digital customer experiences, including their financial interactions.
Financial institutions (FIs), however, are struggling to adapt. 2/3 of today’s customers expect their FI to understand their needs - but only 27% feel the industry is customer-centric. Making matters worse: only 14% of financial services companies are actually in the process of implementing digital strategies.
Meeting digital expectations is paramount to acquiring and retaining customers, where delivering an exceptional customer experience will be how FIs stand out from the crowd.
This explains the rising popularity of business texting – easy, frictionless, familiar - as a proven and effective solution that customers prefer over other modes of communicating with FIs.
Join us as we look at the myriad ways that business texting consistently brings long-term value to both clients and FIs alike.
1. Turns conversations into loyal customers
Given the importance of finances in people’s lives, customers are keen to do business with FIs they trust. And one of the easiest ways to improve trust is by having consistent and open two-way conversations with customers that are convenient and non-intrusive – virtually impossible with emails or phone calls.
That smartphones are so integrated into our daily life positions business texting as the best communication solution to meet changing digital expectations. Seamless, quick, and informative, texting creates a better customer experience that engages people directly. Over time, it is these authentic conversations that nurture trust, keep customers happy, and entrenches retention.
2. Proves consistently higher conversion rates
Converting leads into sales and prospects and then into loyal customers is an ongoing challenge for any company: the conversion rate for cold calls is less than 1% , email marketing stands at 3.26%, while Google Ads is 3.2%.
Business texting is already known to surpass emails’ open, read, and response rates. And when it comes to conversion, texting beats all comers, especially with an industry-leading platform like Statflo.
An analysis of Statflo data reveals that our customers have more than a 5% average conversion rate, with high-performing outliers exceeding an impressive 10%. Statflo also has templates called “chatstarters” specially designed to initiate conversations focused on conversion which, if used, can almost triple the conversation rate to just over 13%.
3. Attracts new and younger clientele
Raised in the digital age, Gen Z and millennials live in the digital world, eschewing the face-to-face interactions of in-branch visits in favor of quick, seamless digital communications.
To attract and retain new and younger clientele looking for fast, frictionless experiences, FIs need to have the right digital options in place, and none is better suited to this demographic than business texting. Even with the array of channels at their disposal, texting is the communication medium of choice for most people under 40, so failing to have this option means, without a second thought, they will quickly look to those who can provide it.
4. Combines quantity and quality, efficiency and effectiveness
Mass messaging has always suffered quality issues. Email outreach posts huge numbers, but doing so requires a one-size-fits-all message that comes across as generic and impersonal. Efficient, yes, but definitely not effective, as flooded inboxes have now desensitized consumers to mass marketing.
Business texting platforms, with their ability to personalize messages according to each customer’s history and preferences, is the best of both worlds: quantity with quality, scalability with a personalized touch, massive reach with the trust-building intimacy of a friendly conversation.
With Statflo, you have endless ways of sending personalized messages at high rates, expanding your reach with minimal effort by merging efficiency and effectiveness in one simple text.
5. Removes barriers between customers and FIs
Finances are already stressful without the traditional barriers in place at FIs. So when basic financial interactions like onboarding or lending require multiple phone calls and in-branch visits, forcing the customer to answer the same questions and fill out the same forms, it is easy to see why more and more people switch to FIs that can offer fast, convenient digital solutions.
Quick, seamless tools like texting reduces the anxiety that so often comes with managing financial health. When you send your customer a simple, non-intrusive text about an upcoming or overdue payment, they are much more inclined to view it as a gentle reminder compared to disruptive collection phone calls.
Texting: adding value, redefining success
Future success depends on FIs delivering preferred solutions and better experiences more quickly and efficiently than ever before.
When retail banks implement the right tools and tech integrations, they bring value-added context and seamless interactions to create engaging, personalized customer conversations, enriching the entire banking journey in a way that keeps coming back.
So with customer retention and sales critical for survival in a digital age, business texting offers a way to improve and scale both, bringing your FI into the digital world and giving your customers exactly what they want.
To learn more about the value of business texting, read our whitepaper Why Business Texting? Use Cases for Financial Institutions.
