In every request for proposal (RFP) that comes across our desks, we’re always asked the same question; why do customers drop out of the onboarding journey? Given how often we’re asked how to reduce customer abandonment, we decided to share our thoughts on the issue and provide you with some insights into KYC and onboarding.
This is not a new question by any means for the industry, especially when building a new KYC journey. Customers dropping out midway through the onboarding process is an issue faced across all industries and is a persistent source of confusion for businesses.
Human nature and customer abandonment
Part of this is human nature; moods and whims can result in a potential customer exiting for seemingly no reason. But there is also an issue of friction. Customers do not want high-friction journeys that see them forced to onboard in ways that don’t fit with their lifestyle.
Banks and building societies in particular often fail to provide customers with a seamless process that accounts for all possibilities. ID document validation and facial biometrics are often separate processes rather than an automatic redirection for the customer if database checks fail.
Those are just two examples of how inefficient and disconnected the journey can be for customers. When faced with these roadblocks customers quickly lose motivation and can exit the journey without any chance of being recaptured and onboarded.
Historically, KYC regulations have resulted in these narrow customer onboarding journeys that fail to understand how varied the ways are that customer may want to interact with the business.
There are three key elements to the customer onboarding journey that every single business should be aware of and should make sure they’re able to accomplish, if they want to reduce customer abandonment.
1. Give your customers choices
Your customers are not a homogenous group and expecting them to interact with your business in one way is foolhardy at best. The one thing they all have in common is that they want to be able to sign up easily. Some will do it through their laptop, others prefer mobile apps, and many will freely switch between their devices to interact with your business.
Customer applications won’t always start and finish in the same session, particularly in the current climate when homeworking is often interrupted by home schooling or household tussles over internet bandwidth! Customer applications need to be able to transition from laptop to tablet to phone, and users expect to be able to continue exactly where they left off. That’s the reality of digital experiences today, if you give that sense of continuity to your customer then they’re far more likely to see the onboarding journey through to the end.
Delivering an error message that says your customer has not passed a database check and now needs to be onboarded in a branch or over the phone is not putting the customer first. In a digital world insisting on an analogue method for onboarding is a message to your customer that you provide an outdated service and aren’t going to be their digital ally to meet with their digital needs.
2. Customise the KYC interface and configure the journey
Your customers choose to work with your business, that’s why they’re on your customer onboarding journey, so customising the KYC interface to reflect your brand is a powerful way of letting the customer know that you’re with them every step of the way.
Even when engaging the services of a third-party KYC provider, your customer is putting their trust in your business. Creating a consistent brand journey that reflects your design principles and tailored to your branding strengthens the business-customer relationship.
It means that your customers feel as though you’re the one delivering them a strong onboarding journey that’s fitted to their needs rather than outsourcing the issue to a third party. This can be done using HooYu’s new user interface which allows for complete design customisation to your brand specifications.
In addition, the customer journey can be strengthened by making sure you deliver a configurable journey that has flexibility according to your risk-based approach to KYC. The benefits of this are not immediately obvious to the customer.
However, having a journey that is able to move across risk scenarios fluidly and without interruption provides a more powerful experience. It means that the customer is able to be onboarded without feeling targeted by the business for further steps with more rigorous checks.
3. Meet the customer’s needs
The customer should be at the centre of every onboarding journey. That means the experience should guide the customer through the process with timely prompts, tips, and explanations where necessary. Expecting the customer to have an in-depth knowledge of what they need to provide is unrealistic when trying to cater to digital natives such as millennials and those in older generations who may require further support and guidance.
Customers are also far more international now than they’ve ever been in the past, your onboarding journey should reflect the need to cater to multiple languages. Allowing your journey to switch to the customer’s preferred language using their device settings is a feature that reminds the customer that you’re putting their needs first.
Serving the user interface in Polish or Russian or Spanish or any other language and having strong accessibility options shows that you as business, are considerate of all your potential customers. Making accessibility a key feature of your onboarding journey will develop and improve your relationship with the customer without further effort.
Lastly, it’s important to understand that the most important resource your customers have is their time. An onboarding journey is demanding that time from them. Delivering a user experience where the journey can be paused for over a day and retains the information customers have already submitted is a powerful tool to helping them complete the journey. Using push notifications and other nudges, the onboarding journey can gently recapture the customer and help them get across the KYC finishing line.
By partnering with the right KYC provider, you can create an onboarding workflow that provides a positive experience for your customer from the start of the relationship. The right journey will include all of these aspects and ensure that you meet your compliance requirements without creating customer frustration.
Talk to us about how to create the right KYC journey for your business.
