The 4 Top Onboarding Mistakes – and How to Stop Making Them
Trust: it is one of the biggest reasons so many customers open accounts at a specific bank or credit union. They want to receive services that are personalized to their needs, reliable, and convenient. It’s why every bank tries to compete by offering an exceptional customer onboarding experience.
But when it comes to new account enrollment, many financial services organizations struggle to deliver the personalization, speed, and convenience customers are counting on. Instead, their onboarding process is often beset by frustrating delays and old-fashioned, multi-day processes – driving many customers to abandon their signup process and move to a competitor.
It’s a loss for both bank and customer. So why does it keep happening? Often, it’s because of one or more of these four mistakes.
The Four Barriers to Better Customer Onboarding
Your organization may not experience each of these barriers, but they all lead to the same destination: high abandonment within your onboarding funnel.
- Complexity. On the back end, your organization is using too many systems. You have different systems for personal, retail, online, and commercial accounts, and multiple processes to approve customer documents or complete Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. The result is that you have to train your staff on multiple systems, while each signup becomes a longer process.
- Delays. Customers motivated to open an account typically want to begin transacting immediately. But when they have to wait for you to verify their documents or complete KYC actions, those transactions usually have to wait at least a day – resulting in disappointed new customers.
- Confusion. Customers usually know what they want to accomplish – but they don’t always know which of your products will best help them do that. So they begin doing research to figure that out, increasing the likelihood they’ll discover a competitor’s product and pursue that instead.
- Inconvenience. Customers live an omnichannel existence switching between mobile, desktop and online from moment to moment. They expect their account enrollment to accommodate those choices – and may change their minds if it can’t.
Entering the New Era of Onboarding
While the above scenario may seem like the expected status quo, new onboarding tools have changed the game – and customers won’t settle for anything less. Here’s what their ideal onboarding experience looks like:
A recent college graduate relocating for her first job decides to open an account at a local credit union. She needs to put a deposit down on an apartment and arrange direct deposit for her paychecks – and she wants to begin purchasing furniture that day. She launches the process from her phone, answers a few questions, and is pleased to find the right financial product recommended for her. She quickly provides the information requested – and within 20 minutes, she’s able to complete her transaction.
Fast, simple, and secure, right? That’s the kind of onboarding process that earns a member’s respect and loyalty. This member is now more likely to continue using the credit union when she decides to buy a new car or apply for a mortgage.
Maybe you’re not able to provide that kind of seamless onboarding yet. But the right tools can get you there – Consider LaunchPoint – a leading client/account onboarding solution. LaunchPoint accelerates enrollment through:
- A universal engine that works for business, personal, retail, and online accounts – keeping it simple for both your staff and your customers
- Intuitive, built-in workflows that boost staff productivity
- An omnichannel enrollment process that lets customers enroll however, whenever and from wherever they need to open an account
- An advanced rules engine that connects customers to the most appropriate products for their needs
- Ability to perform KYC verification real-time – eliminating long delays
- Real-time funding options and integration with credit and/or debit card empowers customers to use account immediately
- Customer self-service options that help them apply, check account status, add documents and correct errors
- Nuanced configuration options for ultimate control across product management, application behavior, analytics, and work routing
Becoming #1 with One and Done
By removing traditional lag time and shrinking a two-day process to 15 minutes, LaunchPoint wins your new customer’s loyalty – helping them feel confident in their choice and appreciative of your sophistication. This solution can verify and onboard customers, then activate their product(s) in one session (consumer and business). There’s no reason to abandon the funnel or learn about a competitor’s product, which is why LaunchPoint increases full-account enrollment and funding by 25%.
In the digital age, customer expectations will continue to rise. Faster and more personalized onboarding is the first step to a long-term, loyal financial services relationship – and more easily attainable than ever with the right tools.
