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First impressions count: bank onboarding customer experience

First impressions count: bank onboarding customer experience

Customer experience

Documents printed – Check.
ID – Check.
Paper application form complete – Check.
Arriving at the branch to be told you’re missing a document – Check.
Another lunch hour used up – Check.

As defined by Forrester, customer experience is “How customers perceive their interactions with your company.”  Therefore, when great effort has been placed on attracting new customers, it is of paramount importance to ensure the onboarding journey is seamless to succeed in creating a positive and lasting impression.

Moreover, customers are now comparing their experiences with digital leaders from other industries. No industry has been immune to customers ever-rising expectations, which includes the banking industry.

This article aims to uncover what has expedited customer experience expectations in banking and how banks can respond, with a focus on the customer onboarding journey.

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Is noon on its way to deliver the best ecommerce experience in the GCC?

Customer experience Ecommerce

Noon.com, the $1 billion e-commerce joint venture founded by Mohamed Alabbar, was announced in November 2016 as a ‘future-focused company which is the biggest online shopping platform ever seen in the region’. Its launch at the time was expected in January 2017.

Since then, noon acquired JadoPado in May and appointed Faraz Khalid (formerly of Namshi) as CEO in July following Emaar’s acquisition of 51% of Namshi.com. Meanwhile, Amazon completed their acquisition of Souq.com in July.

On the evening of the 30th September the long awaited noon.com went live followed by a dozen announcements in the regional press. By the end of the next day, The National even published a price comparison benchmark with their direct rival Souq.com.

We visited the website of this new marketplace with a lot of excitement and asked ourselves ‘Is noon.com up to market expectations?’

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Meeting the omnichannel expectations of your customers

Customer experience Ecommerce

From department stores through to grocers and mall operators, omnichannel is rapidly gaining momentum in the MENA region. As more and more retailers are evaluating which way to go in the age of digital and customer-centricity, we highlight in this short article the key differentiators between siloed-multichannel and fully transformational omnichannel approaches.

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Digital interactions driving store conversion & sales

Customer experience Omnichannel transformation

In our previous article, we reviewed some of the digital tools used by retailers to drive store footfall and customer engagement with their products and brands.
In the second of this 2-part series, we will now look at examples of digital technologies that can be used in store to drive conversion levels and sales.

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Geant and Choithrams websites redesign: have they improved the customer experience?

Customer experience Ecommerce

In March, we released our Multichannel grocery shopping report which analyzed from a customer perspective the multichannel offerings of 4 leading grocers in the UAE. In parallel to this, Geant and Choithrams, who were both reviewed in the report, have released new versions of their respective e-commerce websites. Beyond the noticeably revamped designs though, what are the main changes which have been implemented and have they improved the overall customer experience?

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Digital interactions driving store footfall & engagement

Customer experience Omnichannel transformation

Due to the digital evolution, the bricks-and-mortar retailing space is changing with many analysts predicting that we will see more changes in the next 5 years than we have seen in the past 20.

Historically driven by a need to stop stores simply becoming showrooms, retailers now have access to an abundance of digitally interactive solutions they can use in pursuing their overall business objectives, from driving customer engagement and loyalty through to conversion and sales.

In the first of a 2-part article, we will look at some of the technologies and tools which can be used by retailers to drive footfall and customer engagement levels in the store itself.

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Zara RFID fitting room: making apparel shopping easier

Customer experience Omnichannel transformation

Addressing pain points of apparel shopping

Zara recently opened a new store in Soho, their first one to feature the “smart” dressing room using RFID technology. Inside the fitting room, customers can see on a touch screen the product information of the items they brought in, all tagged with RFID, as well as available sizes and colors.

RFID is an exciting technology with numerous possible retail applications. Yet, it is often used to showcase digital innovation or generate buzz. Zara’s initiative on the other hand appears more customer-centric than technology-driven: it enhances the customer path, rather than changing or disrupting it, and simply makes it easier and more convenient.

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Case study: Virgin Megastore MENA e-commerce

Customer experience Ecommerce

Virgin Megastore MENA launched their first e-commerce channel and transform themselves into an omnichannel organization in only 9 months.

Gain unique insights on this project, from inception through to launch, and find out how we helped the leading lifestyle & entertainment brand deliver the first omnichannel experience in the Middle East.

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Benefits of personas in multichannel commerce

CRM & Loyalty Customer experience Ecommerce

United Arab Emirates retailers deal with more than a hundred nationalities. This means different cultures and various shopping habits, sensitivities and aesthetics preferences. When designing an e-commerce website, an app or even an email blast, it is essential to know and understand your target user. Unfortunately, there is no “common user” and different customer groups must be addressed differently. It is even truer in the UAE, where it is unlikely the designer shares the same cultural background as his/her target audience.

This is where personas come into play: personas are fictional characters representing typical users or customers; they help shape profiles based on needs, motivations and desires. As we wrote in a previous blog on User Experience, creating personas can greatly facilitate decision-making, and also reduce errors and rework hours traditionally associated with design concept misinterpretations as part of multichannel projects.

In this article, we will not delve into what personas are, as there is plenty of literature on this topic, but focus more on their benefits for a multichannel business, in particular in the UAE.

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How User Experience matters in multichannel commerce – Part II

Customer experience Ecommerce

Last month we wrote about how User Experience design matters in helping satisfying customers growing multichannel expectations, through understanding the users, their context and the interfaces they are interacting with.

We mainly focused on the customer demands and we will now see how User Experience design participates in meeting business objectives.

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