Customer onboarding has always been an ambiguous process. Companies never know what level of interaction is necessary to gain all the data they need while minimizing the danger of user friction. While some claim less is more as it guarantees user satisfaction, it also leaves you more open to malicious actors.
At the same time, introducing too many requirements can result in friction and eventual loss of potential customers despite it increasing your cybersecurity levels.
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The trick is figuring out the correct balance between too much and too little, ensuring your safety and customer satisfaction. This can be hard to do in standard times, but it seems almost impossible in a recession. Luckily, by following the advice below, not only will you be able to onboard customers with minimum friction during the recession, but you will excel in it.
What is the importance of onboarding?
User onboarding is beneficial for businesses and their future customers as it allows you to gain more information about users while introducing them to your product and helping them realize its full potential. Many companies believe the trick is onboarding customers as quickly as possible, but that is only partially correct. You still need to get the necessary information to confirm you are not dealing with bad actors, and your customers need help acclimating to new products. If you just give them access to your product or service without helping them understand its full value, you might get a one-time customer, but they will not return for more.
Simply attracting customers to your product or service is no longer enough, as there is still a high chance of low engagement or even abandonment. This is where customer onboarding can do its magic and ensure your potential leads turn into customers by aligning your service with customer expectations. Having an effective onboarding strategy can be all the difference between losing customers altogether and creating a loyal customer base.
How to improve customer onboarding and minimize user friction in recession times?
Creating an effective onboarding strategy can be daunting. It puts you in a difficult place of trying to devise a process that will target different sets of customers, provide them with all the necessary information about your product or service, protect your business and minimize user friction. The key is to find a perfect balance, and the advice below will help you accomplish that.
- Digital onboarding is a must.
Onboarding your customers is one of the most important elements of your business, and you need to ensure it is done as efficiently as possible. Digital onboarding can reduce the time necessary for onboarding from days and weeks to minutes or hours, minimize the cost connected with manual checks, and improve your cybersecurity procedure. According to research by the consultancy firm Oliver Wyman, banks that use traditional onboarding need to invest $150 to onboard a new client. At the same time, the cost goes down to $30 when digital onboarding is utilized. With the fintech industry stepping up to the challenge, digital onboarding in banking has become a must and not an option, especially in the face of a recession.
- Offer a multi-channel experience.
Not every customer is the same and prefers the same level of communication, which is why you must ensure you adjust it accordingly. From your website, chats, mobile apps, SMS, and email to even in-person experience, you can utilize any multi-channel communication tool to ensure your customers remain happy during any step of their journey. This reduces the friction as customers would be able to contact you on different channels based on their urgency level and preferences and quickly receive the solution to their problems.
- Personalize the onboarding process
Customers want to know that you appreciate them and that you care about their business, and personalizing the onboarding experience allows you to do just that. You can personalize their experience in many ways, such as using their name instead of a general greeting. You can even ask for their reason for accessing your service or product and guide them through the process based on the response, or even send them personalized offers through their customer journey. Personalization increases user motivation to do business with you and puts you ahead of the competition, which is extremely useful during recession times.
- Minimize the required input from users.
Every additional field customers need to fill out increases the chances they will decide it is not worth it and abandon your business, turning to your competition. Analyze all the fields and decide which of them are necessary and which aren’t to reduce user friction and abandonment. If the fields are required, try to utilize a pre-fill method to minimize the time and effort customers need to invest. Digital onboarding is extremely useful in reducing the number of necessary fields as it uses enrichment tools to gather more information about users from external and internal sources. This way, you can verify their identity without causing any unnecessary friction.
- Don’t ignore abandoned applications.
Any customer that shows interest in your product or service is a potential lean, even if they haven’t completed an application. By capturing their contact information early in the process, you will have the means to follow up with them and transform them into customers. By enquiring if they need any help and have any questions regarding the process or just by sending them a special offer, you might be able to motivate them to complete the onboarding process. As financial technology evolves and competition grows stronger, re-engaging potential customers will only become more important.
- Continue to improve your onboarding process.
Updating your onboarding process is never complete, as customer preferences and requirements constantly change. Stay in the loop with the changes in customer requirements, continue adopting new trends, and you will be able to continuously provide frictionless digital onboarding even in the face of recession.
Conclusion
Turning potential leads into customers has become more important than ever. Not only is competition getting stronger, but customer expectations are constantly changing, making it harder to keep up, especially when faced with the challenges of a recession. By following the advice above, you will be able to create a frictionless, time and cost effective onboarding strategy that will stay strong even when faced with recession.