Boosting Your Financial Institution’s Ease of Doing Business Rating

If you’re in the process of overhauling the customer experience at your financial institution, you’re likely looking for ways to evaluate what already is and isn’t working. You can do this by taking stock of the various factors that affect customer satisfaction. To that end, we’re diving into one of the most essential metrics that contribute to a positive customer experience: ease of doing business. Here’s what you need to know about this topic to improve your rating and grow overall customer satisfaction.

What Does “Ease of Doing Business” Mean?

Ease of doing business isn’t as nebulous as it sounds; here at Avannis, we break it down into a few key categories.

Knowledgeable Employees

Your front-line employees play a large role in customer perception of your business. If they present themselves as knowledgeable, attentive, and invested in the well-being of every person that seeks out banking services, your customers are more likely to view your financial institution favorably.

Technology

Technology is another important facet of ease of doing business. Everything from the ATMs at various branches to your mobile app should be as straightforward and intuitive as possible to facilitate the customer journey. If your website is riddled with conflicting information or is difficult to navigate, you risk confusing your customers. And if they can’t accomplish what they need or want to accomplish, they’ll take their business elsewhere.

Ability to Avoid Fees

Banking customers highly value financial institutions who treat them as more than just a number—as illustrated by the banking industry’s shift towards personalization. If your employees go above and beyond to save customers money, ensure that they’re on the correct plan, and ultimately deliver a cohesive, omnichannel experience while avoiding unnecessary fees, your business will be perceived as honest, trustworthy, and helpful.

How to Improve Your Ease of Doing Business Rating

Once you’ve taken stock of where your customer service is currently at in terms of those three factors, you’ll be ready to strengthen weak areas and eliminate pain points. Here are some strategies financial institutions can employ to boost an ease of doing business score.

Customer Listening

It goes without saying that to understand the customer experience, you need to know what and how the average customer thinks. Consider splitting your customer base into psychographic segments in order to better identify and understand common experiences, needs, and behavioral patterns.  

Customer service surveys are one of the most effective listening methods for examining your ease of doing business rating. At Avannis, we design and implement surveys that provide an in-depth understanding of this and other metrics. One of the most important questions that examine customer perception of the banking experience is, “Were you able to do everything you wanted to do?” This invites customers to reflect on not just the quality of their experience, but the accessibility of your banking services, whether through the web, on a mobile device, or in person.

Employee Training

Although simple banking transactions are increasingly made online, the in-person experience remains vital to customer retention. Big decisions like signing a mortgage are already tense enough; your employees’ job is to make the experience as smooth and painless as possible. Ensure that your front-line and back-office staff members are engaged and encouraged to take ownership of their work. This might require training sessions dedicated to key aspects of service, or ensuring that certain teams get the support that they need to do their jobs well. And if survey results are generally positive in terms of your staff, make sure to reward their hard work and provide incentive to keep this key pillar of ease strong.

Demystifying Technology

Our last note is to make sure that your customers actually know what they can do with the banking solutions available to them. Ask them if they’re aware of what they can do, and find out what they still want to achieve but can’t. Then, ask yourself how straightforward your banking solutions and services are. Are they all intuitive and easy to navigate? If not, you may want to consider streamlining services, eliminating a touchpoint, or providing clearer instructions and information to interested customers. On the other hand, if you see a present need for additional technology or service options, and the data backs this up, you may find it helpful to expand your offerings. 

How Avannis Can Help

Any and all changes to the customer experience should first be backed up by data. Avannis can help you collect, sort, and analyze that data through a variety of measurement methodologies, ultimately generating actionable insights. Our decades of experience improving customer loyalty at financial institutions have put us in the perfect position to provide guidance as you streamline the customer experience. We can even show you your ease of business ranking compared to industry peers! Contact us today to learn more about our offerings.