Meet today’s banking customers:
*They don’t think in terms of channels (in-branch, Internet, call center, mobile and social networks).
*They want you to be there when they need you.
*They have short attention spans and get frustrated quickly.
*They want better service, self-service – just a great experience overall.
*They are naturally wary and desire a more personal, friendly, trustworthy banking partner.
*More than ever before, they will leave you if not satisfied.
*They are using mobile and social technology in their personal lives to interact with the banks they trust and to manage their work and lives.
The competition is on for banks, as more than one in three U.S. consumers are looking to mobile for their banking needs.
So what are the banks to do? As mobile and social networking become more prominent in our lives (especially with the younger generation) these technologies present new opportunities to transform customer interactions and attract and retain customers. Gartner estimates that the 5 billion mobile phones in use worldwide in 2010 will grow to more than 6.7 billion connections by 2015. So it is inevitable that more and more people will turn to mobile first. To get ahead of that curve, banks and other financial institutions need to invest in mobile technology now.
And they are – especially in the U.S. Our own desktop research found that:
*Nine out of the top 10 financial institutions have mobile banking offerings available either through mobile Internet or mobile apps.
*Seven out of the top 10 U.S. banks offer both a mobile-optimized Web site and a native mobile banking app available to consumers.
Antenna commissioned YouGov to conduct a consumer survey in both the U.S. and UK to see not only who was using mobile banking, but how they were using it, and what were the prevailing attitudes and concerns. The online survey of more than 2,000 respondents showed that more than one in three U.S. consumers with mobile phones, smartphones and tablets currently use mobile banking.
Last week, Antenna executives traveled to London to present our findings to a few journalists and industry analysts and to talk to a group of senior executives from a variety of financial institutions. The gap between the U.S. and the UK in terms of mobile banking usage got everyone’s attention. Only 25 percent of UK mobile Internet users now utilize mobile banking services in comparison to more than 40 percent in the U.S. Our own study revealed that only four out of 14 high street banks surveyed in the UK offer a dedicated mobile banking app, and only one of the top 10 banks had both mobile app and web offerings. This clearly shows that the U.S. mobile banking market is more mature than its counterpart in the UK.
In conversations with Antenna’s U.S. banking customers, we see evidence of this maturity. Most large retail banks are well beyond their initial mobile deployment. As such, they have a better understanding of the development effort, and the maintenance requirements of managing native apps for multiple OS’s/devices and mobile Web site optimized across thousands of device types. This is why many opt for a more manageable approach using a mobile platform – to deliver cross device, rich UI applications in a highly fragmented mobile market without compromising on security and performance.
Having an ‘iPhone strategy’ is no longer good enough. Little more than a year ago, mobile banking was nice to have. It didn’t need to be “the best” – it just had to be functional. Now there is more competition, with banks wanting to add more advanced features to offer something more compelling and engaging than their rivals. With increasing competition (from non-banks too), the need for customer centricity, and no sign of device fragmentation abating, banks must get creative to attract and retain customers. To ensure they are reaching all your customers and delivering a compelling and valuable user experience no matter the device, banks need to have a holistic approach that provides easy-to-use mobile Web and apps across all device platforms. It’s those banks, which build up mobile trust in the short-term, that are going to gain the most when m-commerce becomes commonplace in the long-term.
Tags: Antenna, Jim Somers, Marketing Moonshot, mobile banking, Mobile Internet, survey, YouGov
[...] Last week, Antenna rode into town. London town, to be precise. Antenna CEO Jim Hemmer, its CMO Jim Somers, and I, met to talk about mobile banking (I make this sound like a big deal; they came over from New Jersey, and I had to come all the way from Guildford, Jewel of the South.) And we came armed – with a pedigree (our already-delivered mobile solutions for ING Direct, RBS, Garanti, among others) – and with fresh consumer research from YouGov, which polled over 2,000 adults in the UK on their mobile banking habits on our behalf. Jim Somers details the U.S. findings in his post. [...]