Consumers want best of both worlds: Mobile & personal banking

by: Brian Day

Consumers are only slightly more interested in maintaining a digital banking relationship with their financial institution (FI) than a personal one.

According to a recent Gallup poll, the majority of consumers utilize digital banking. In fact, 71 percent of the 6,000 banking customers surveyed said they used online banking to pay a bill in the prior three months. Twenty-one percent used mobile deposit.

The survey also concluded a little more than half would prefer to give up their personal banking relationship if they had to choose between digital or personal interaction. Forty-seven percent said they’d give up their digital banking relationship over their personal one. However, just 11 percent of those surveyed would like their banking relationship to be digital-only.

Given the minimal spread between those who would give up digital and those who would give up personal, it appears a conscious mix of digital and personal is the key to valuable banking relationships. It’s important to remember in today’s environment, digital needs to be tailored to transactional types of interaction, meaning simple and fast. Personal interaction should be tailored toward educating the consumer. Since the consumer is meeting personally, face-to-face, he or she is seeking a more consultative experience.

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