Do you ever wonder why so many people start an online loan application but never finish it? 🤔
You don't need us to tell you—competition for loan growth and customer retention is fierce in today's financial landscape. It's not a stretch to call these survival imperatives.
As you battle bigger banks and nimble fintechs, navigate the monumental "Great Wealth Transfer" to younger generations, and grapple with persistent economic uncertainties, you can't afford to let potential deposit growth walk away. Every prospective customer who looks your way is a precious commodity.
How your organization handles these opportunities is critical. In this post, we'll share a simple, 4-step strategy to strengthen your lending conversion rate with help from the contact center.
The Problem: Lending Conversion Friction
Despite significant investments in attracting potential depositors, a substantial number of prospects encounter friction, struggle with online account opening, or simply abandon the process. The statistics speak for themselves: abandonment rates can soar past 50% if opening a new account takes more than three to five minutes. A quarter of customers even cite a lack of communication as the reason for bailing on the onboarding process.
This widespread abandonment directly translates into lost deposits and customer churn, leaving financial institutions with significant revenue on the table.
- 48% of customers experience friction during account opening. For a pioneer in the science of creating an "effortless experience," this indicates that about half of all interactions include elements that repel customers rather than attract them.
- 68% of users abandon the digital onboarding process after starting. This is like running a marathon and quitting just before the finish line. Getting a customer to the finish line only to create unnecessary effort can derail the entire process.
- 25% of customers who give up during the process change financial institutions altogether. Losing a loan conversion is bad enough, but when it causes churn, you've lost twice.
This means banks are losing out on a lot of money and new customers. Losing a loan conversion is bad enough, but when a customer leaves for good, it's a double loss.
Bridging the Gap
The core challenge lies in bridging a small gap in the customer’s overall journey. This is the gap between:
- The experience of using your digital channels (which customers overwhelmingly select first when rate-shopping).
- The personalized, high-touch experience of an in-branch visit.
The solution? Instant, contextual help exactly when and where it's needed most.
This kind of thinking—matching the right interaction to the specific needs of each customer—seemed impossible to execute and scale just a couple of years ago. But as companies unify all interactions, this gap has been smoothed over, replaced by a seamless experience that requires little mental or physical effort on the customer’s part. This seamless connection is the key to improving your lending conversion.
The 4-Step Lending Conversion Checklist
By moving to a unified customer interactions platform, your company's strategic approach to digital engagement can evolve. The addition of new AI tools and capabilities dramatically changes your ability to be proactive with prospective customers and guide them through the entire process in the most efficient way possible.
To become a "conversion convert" and significantly boost deposit growth and retention, consider these four questions:
1. Are You Automatically Reaching Out?
Do you automatically reach out to customers every time they:
- Visit a rate or product page on your digital properties?
- Engage with an ad about a current promotion?
- Own a financial product (e.g., a share certificate) that is about to expire?
Imagine a customer is looking at a loan page on your website or clicking on an ad for a special offer. Your system should be able to automatically reach out to them. By using a platform that connects all your digital customer information, you can easily know who is interested and send them a custom message.
2. Are You Guiding Customers Past Roadblocks?
Do you proactively guide customers past application roadblocks such as:
- Verifying their ID?
- Transferring funds?
- Submitting personal information?
Psychologically, a customer in the middle of an application is adrift. They’re operating solo with a keyboard and their thoughts. What if you offered clear directions, encouragement, and set expectations throughout the process? Using business rules, you can become far more proactive with instructions and transitions. The customer may be on their own, but they're really not. You can now automate the process of guiding them all the way.
3. Is Support Seamless and Accessible?
Do you make it easy for applicants to seamlessly receive support via:
- Chat with virtual assistants that can answer almost every question about loans?
- A live voice conversation with a human agent on the customer’s own screen?
- Video chat with a human agent?
Finding the right balance between human and AI interactions is a challenge for every company. But it is now possible to find a perfect balance even within a single interaction. You can use a virtual assistant for part of a process (like beginning an application) and then seamlessly transition to a human agent the moment the customer needs to connect with a person. This wouldn't be possible in a channel-centric contact center where all channels are operated separately by different vendors.
4. Are You Leveraging AI to Boost Lending Conversions?
Do you use AI capabilities to boost conversions by:
- Giving agents real-time suggestions and recommendations to match a customer to the best possible rate or product?
- Offering periodic agent-specific best-practice coaching recommendations based on past customer conversion interactions?
- Automating trend analyses based on the performance of a single agent, a team, or the entire frontline team?
In a contact center environment, when humans and AI work together as a team, it doesn't take long for people at all levels to recognize their jobs just got a whole lot easier and more efficient. Virtual assistance is like "the help I didn't even know I needed" that quickly becomes "the tool you'll never pry away". Since we know that reducing employee effort inevitably reduces customer effort—a dominant key to customer loyalty—everyone comes out a winner.
Every new opportunity to move a customer from interested to converted is increasingly important. But now, you can convert at much higher rates than before by unifying all your customer interactions—voice, digital, and AI—every interaction, every time.
⭐️Ready to stop losing potential customers and start boosting your lending conversion? Contact us today to learn how our ChannelLess® Architecture and AI for All™ can help you bridge the gap between digital and human support, making your lending process seamless and effortless for everyone.
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