You never get a second chance to make a first impression. This is something that financial institutions are becoming increasingly aware of in the digital channel. Poor user experience (UX) might include a digital banking app that is difficult to navigate, services not available online or slow responses to enquiries or applications. Any one of these may mean that a customer starts to look elsewhere for an easier, more convenient way to manage their finances and there are plenty of digital challengers waiting in the wings to win over those unhappy customers.
Making UX improvements
Fixing the issue after the fact may be too late for the customers who have already left, but improvements can reduce the amount of customer attrition quite significantly. This makes UX an issue of commercial and strategic significance, so it’s important to get it right. The challenge is that there is no set standard to reach because customer expectations keep changing. New innovations from fintech challengers and other e-commerce businesses keep raising the bar, and this means that there is no single fixed goal and delivering good UX will always be an iterative process. The question, then, is how do financial institutions deliver a positive UX against a landscape where customers and competitors keep moving the goal posts?
Frameworks can deliver a high quality, evolving UX
At CREALOGIX user experience is leading the way we design our product. UX design for us includes research into usability and user insights, which is why we know, consistency across the digital portfolio is a critical factor for users.
CREALOGIX User Experience Framework (UXF) has been designed to optimise and create consistency in the digital user experience. It provides the front-end framework to surface multiple integrated services and enables financial institutions to provide the solutions needed to fully engage with customers. In addition to UXF, our Design System ensures UI consistency across the various user journeys available in the app . With our front-end development tools, financial institutions are also empowered to build new features and integrate new components easily and seamlessly with high standards of UX baked into the solution. Our design process allows iterative prototyping and includes user testing until the best user experience is ready to be implemented.
Security and UX
A secure mobile banking application is essential. However, to deliver an app according to high security standards, many banks are left facing the challenge that the banking app was built separately to any online desktop service and therefore the two services aren’t integrated or consistent. The customer experience is fragmented across the digital portfolio. Our Mobile Application Platform ensures secure, seamless integration with digital and back-office banking services, while providing security up to the standards of a modern banking app. For the user, this results in having access to the same features, the same data across the devices they use, with a consistent user experience. In addition, the solution includes standard plug-ins that customers expect, such as using biometrics for authentication or the smartphone camera to scan a QR code or pay in a cheque.
Start where you are, keep moving
The challenge of delivering a positive UX is a significant one because there is a lot at stake and the standards that dictate what constitutes good UX keep changing. The first practical step is to assess exactly what the starting point is and make improvements using proven, tested solutions that customers expect. As new features and functionality become available, these can be integrated into the framework to ensure the same high standards. You may never get a second chance to make a first impression, but banks have regular chances to deliver a positive user experience to their customers and ensure high levels of customer satisfaction.
Learn more about user experience in our e-book "In a digital world, user experience is customer experience" and in our CREALOGIX Insights March 2022 issue with focus on user experience.
