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Transaction banking enters the era of customer experience

15 May 2012 1 comment

Craig Ramsey

Head of Real-Time Payments

ACI Worldwide

Customer experience is fast becoming the real differentiator in transaction banking. It is no longer enough to offer a simple, automated payment processing. To build loyalty and drive profitability banks will need to offer a non-stop, interactive banking environment – and to achieve that, they need to pay attention to what corporate customers really want.

Today, these customers already experience rich internet applications as part of their busy personal lives. Consumer applications have set high standards in terms of usability and customer convenience. Customers are entitled to make payments where and when they choose and expect banks to offer payment systems that match their own 24/7 global operations. This is entirely understandable – if retail suppliers, for example, can offer an engaging online experience, why not banks?

So payment and cash management systems must be looked at in the context of the businesses they support and the people who use them. Systems must be functionally rich and integrated, but they must also be engaging and easy to use.

Meeting increasing customer expectations requires total commitment and reacting piecemeal to customer requests buys little time. Banks need to increase their business agility so they can anticipate customer needs and offer an engaging online user experience. The first step will be to choose the right technology and in this sense trusted, proven software partners can help banks in many ways. Banks that get it right will be richly rewarded by its satisfied customers.

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Comments: (1)

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

17 May 2012

A seasoned program manager with over two decades of experience exclusively in the Retail vertical was first put in charge of a transaction banking / payments / cash management program at a Top 5 UK Bank a few years ago. When he heard why the bank had to spend several millions of GBP in implementing an ACTIVE:ACTIVE architecture to ensure automated failover, he mused, "Ah, now I understand, a 5 minute downtime can wreck havoc with a bank's liquidity position whereas it's only a matter of a few T-Shirts lying unsold in the case of a retailer".

I'm reminded of the above story when I read this question: "...if retail suppliers... can offer an engaging online experience, why not banks?".

When I want to buy a shirt online, I might want to view it in 360 degrees, turn it upside down, get a feel for its texture, and so on, before I decide which shirt to buy. And the retailer's website should be geared up for letting me do all that. However, as a retail consumer or corporate treasurer, when I want to make a payment, I really don't want to engage, interact or otherwise schmooze with a bank's website - all I want to do is to spend the least amount of time on the website and move on to other things in my busy life. As long as a bank's website lets me do this, it's doing a great job for the given purpose.

So, as a customer of a bank interested in making a payment, here are the specific things I'd like to see on the EFT screen of a bank's website that's missing from most of them today: (1) Let me simply enter the beneficiary name, bank account details and the transer amount (2) Make the reference field length long enough for me to enter all required details so that the beneficiary can figure out why they're receiving this payment (3) Help minimize the likelihood of my entering wrong details or assure me that I can retrieve my payment if I make a genuine mistake. I'd like the bank to figure out which method of payment to use based on my choice of cost and lead time instead of troubling me by making me add beneficiary by type of payment and so forth.

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