Three actionable insights on digital consumer behaviour for Asia’s financial services brands

The benchmark for finserv customer experience has risen and Contentsquare’s Albert Nel points out the three ways to hit it in 2023.

With the pandemic, new technology and the rising expectations of tech-savvy customers all disrupting the financial services (finserv) industry in 2022, the pressure is on for finserv businesses in Asia to deliver exceptional, competition-beating digital experiences in 2023.

Digital experience represents a huge – and still largely untapped – opportunity for Asian finserv businesses. According to McKinsey, while approximately 70% of consumers in Asia are open to purchasing new finserv products digitally, less than 30% have done so thus far.

To capitalise on this missed opportunity, Asian finserv businesses must deliver personalised and relevant digital experiences that inspire confidence and transactions. This starts with getting a clear understanding of customers’ evolving expectations around digital experience.

Contentsquare’s 2022 FinServ Digital Experience Benchmark Report is the result of our recent analysis of over 2.7 billion user sessions across 502 financial services websites, including those in Asia, to get a global view of how digital experience has changed in 2022 – and how it will change in 2023. Three key takeaways stood out:

1. Connect every device, channel and touchpoint in your customer journey

Although mobile banking is trending, Contentsquare’s report found that finserv customers still prefer to browse on bigger screens. While 60% of online traffic comes from desktop, the share of traffic from mobile devices surprisingly decreased from 40% in 2020 to 37% in 2021. 

Instead of thinking mobile-only, finserv brands should prioritise optimising both desktop and mobile experiences with a multi-device strategy. Beyond providing customers with a responsive or mobile version of your site, this means using data from every touchpoint to build a dynamic and personalised experience across multiple devices.

Using customer data isn’t just about analysing single moments or transactions – it’s about connecting your online and in-person customer journeys from end to end.

Remember: every interaction a customer has with your brand – whether they’re calling into a customer service line, downloading an app or visiting your website – adds to (or detracts from) their customer journey and overall experience with your brand.

No touchpoint should be a low point in your customer journeys. Use customer experience (CX) data to build a dynamic and personal experience that spans every touchpoint and device.

2. Keep customers coming back with personalised CX

Many customers remain loyal to the banking and insurance brands they know and love. Contentsquare’s report found that 59% of visits to financial services sites are from returning users, with 41% from new visitors.

Although bringing in new customers is important, according to Forrester, it costs 5x more than retaining them. Banks that focus on catering to returning customers and achieving higher loyalty scores tend to achieve a greater net increase in current accounts.

But how can your finserv business cater to returning customers while ensuring new customers are engaged? You can kill two birds with one stone by personalising your CX.

Customers often have a different intention or goal in mind each time they visit your site or app. By offering tailored customer journeys relevant for both new and returning customers, brands can offer a personalised, relevant and convenient experience that will encourage repeat engagement.

For example, you can ensure new customers are signposted in the direction of your resources section so they can learn about your products and services, while pointing returning customers in the direction of new products and services they might not have seen or used before.

3. Use behavioural data to build a CX customers love

For obvious reasons, finserv businesses tend to follow highly strict regulations around privacy. This leads to hesitation around collecting and using the customer data needed to create the sort of dynamic, hyper-personalised and truly customer-centric experiences other industries have been serving customers with for years.

But customers are increasingly expecting those experiences from finserv too, and the most successful finserv businesses in 2023 will be those who overcome their natural hesitancy and tap into the power of customer data to optimise their CX. 

The data and metrics provided by customer behaviour analysis empowers brands and marketers to make confident and informed decisions around tailoring and improving their CX.

Behavioural data reveals the areas of a site that users engage with, sticking points which cause friction and hesitation, and points in their journey where they show interest or uncertainty. This data also reveals a slew of other behaviours, such as where and how customers are clicking, tapping or scrolling, empowering brands to better understand the impact of their website’s user experience (UX).

For example, a user’s scroll behaviour helps brands understand whether the content on their site is engaging the audience or not and whether or not customers are seeing content that appears below the fold. Contentsquare’s report found that visitors to finserv sites only scroll 54% of content – a sharp decrease from 64% in 2020 – suggesting that many finserv businesses need to invest more time in optimising page content and structure.

Another potentially worrying statistic: 58% of visitors to finserv sites and apps bounce after viewing just one page. To bring these high bounce rates down, finserv businesses need to understand the intent of their customers and serve it. This hinges on obtaining and using behavioural data. 

As you can see, understanding user behaviour is critical for finserv businesses and user behaviour analysis can help them to optimise their website and app UX, produce desired customer behaviours, such as purchases, sign-ups and engagement, foster customer loyalty, and ultimately drive conversion and revenue.

And crucially, this analysis can be carried out securely, without falling foul of even the most stringent regulations around data.

Hit the finserv digital CX benchmark in 2023

The past few years have seen the finserv sector lift its pace by finding new ways to innovate, increase efficiency and improve digital experiences faster than ever before.

But to truly succeed in 2023 and beyond, finserv brands now need to fully embrace the secure use of customer data – specifically data that captures and analyses every digital interaction to determine which parts of the user journey are and are not working.

Only by drawing on this depth of insights can finserv businesses in Asia (and worldwide) continuously deliver great digital experiences at scale that harness the potential of the hyper-digitised world, and grasp the huge digital opportunity that’s on the table for banks that hit and exceed the benchmark next year.