Why banks need a push notification service?

In recent years, mobile usage and data traffic has been steadily increasing and at present, mobile website usage is on par with desktop across the globe (Mobile internet usage worldwide – Statistics & Facts). By having more and more clients who prefer smartphones to communicate with the outside world, it’s pivotal for companies to utilize on this and make sure their mobile offering is what their clients expect.

Mobile notifications became an integral part of a brands mobile offering.

While engagement varies across industries, the finance industry is among the top industries, where notification engagement is the highest, standing at almost 40%.

How to use push notifications to push your fintech startup to the top

This is no surprise, as mobile notifications allow customers to get timely and relevant updates about their personal finance, something which is high priority for everyone.

In such an environment, there are some strong reasons why banks should utilize the power of mobile notifications. Let’s see below some examples for these.

Strengthen customer relationships and differentiate from competitors

Currently, the financial sector faces disruptive innovations not only from a technological stand point but also from a regulatory perspective. Innovations such as PSD2 and blockchain opens up the financial markets and brings in more competition. In such times, it is crucial to build strong customer relationships by offering exceptional and personalized service for them.

With the help of in-app messages and personalized notifications, financial institutions can differentiate from competitors by utilizing their existing relationships with their clients. This existing relationship is a great basis for offering an experience to the customer that better suits their needs and has added value for them.

For example, using mobile notifications to provide more timely information on account details such as credit or debit transactions, low account balance or on irregular credit card activities, the bank can offer real added benefits to their clients. It also offers great possibilities to offer tailored services, such as travel insurance for customers who are frequently on the road, or investment accounts for people with bigger saving accounts.

Increase service quality

Another great way for banks to utilize the power of mobile notifications is to help increase their service quality across multiple touch points.

By using smart mobile technologies such as location based targeting, banks can interact with their clients who have been to a specific location, for example a branch office. Once the customer leaves the branch, a notification can be created asking the customer to review their experience in the branch office.

This way the bank can get timely feedback on the experience of the clients in the office and use that feedback to improve their service for future visits.

Another great way to utilize this principal is with the help of in-app messages. Once the user has been engaging with the mobile app for a while, she can be prompted with a message asking for a review of the app in the App Store or Google Play store.

By doing so, the overall rating of the app can be increased in the store, resulting in more downloads and valuable feedback for the developer team in improving the mobile offering.

For example, Shine, a French company providing banking services increased their App store rating from 4.3 to 4.8 and their Google Play rating from 4.2 to 4.7.

How we’ve increased our store rating to 4.9

Increase account integrity and safety of the customer

A bank’s relationship with their customer is based on trust. Trust is hard to earn and even harder to keep. When it comes to their financials, people want to make sure that their money is safe and in good care.

One way to help customers have a better grip on their finances and offer an additional layer of safety is to update them with timely mobile notifications regarding their account details.

These messages can include alerts regarding:

Account balance decreases below a certain threshold
Credit card purchases
Irregular credit card activity
Certain credit or debit transactions (such as salary)
Change of personal details (such as email, address or name)

By providing timely updates with the help of mobile notifications, the customer can take direct action when it is needed. It also provides an extra layer of comfort and ease of use to the user.For example, instead the user having to check herself when is their salary arriving to their account, they get automatically notified of this event.

Conclusion

As customers are using mobile more often in their daily lives instead of a desktop computer. Financial institutions should utilize this trend and increase their clients’ satisfaction with smart mobile solutions.

Mobile notifications offer a great way to achieve this, by providing clients an added layer of safety and control regarding their accounts, help decreasing the overall costs and increase service quality across different parts of the business.