With high expectations coming from customers when interacting with a brand, the customer onboarding process is an excellent opportunity for gathering information and learning more about the interests and concerns customers have. The first step to improving the customer experience is implementing a fully digital customer onboarding experience.
If we compare traditional onboarding to fully digital customer onboarding, there is no more signing many documents, watching presentations, and discussing the company’s policies. Now, you save much more time and don’t have to worry about sitting and waiting for hours.
There are many other benefits the customer onboarding process offers you, and in this article, we will discuss all of them!
Let’s dive right in!
How your business benefits from the digital customer onboarding process?
Cost reduction
Onboarding new clients always have a sacrifice to it: time and resources. Even though traditional onboarding encourages lots of paperwork and printing, the digital customer onboarding process saves lots of time and costs for this aspect of a business.
Moreover, it also frees up the HR team from unnecessary work. To say the least, this wouldn’t be the case if it was a traditional onboarding process.
Reduces fraud
Several companies, including banks, have been continuously dealing with fraud over the years. According to statistics, in 2021, fraud losses totaled $52 billion, and we don’t even know what to expect this year. Unfortunately, avoiding security breaches can be difficult to do so, especially as technology advances even more.
The digital onboarding process allows businesses to improve their system’s security and reduce fraud due to the many tools it provides for you to check the customer’s identity. Additionally, you can connect with the customer, run guided interviews, and more.
A few fraud detection tools you can consider using are:
- SEON
- Fraud.net
- Xceed
- Kount, and more
These tools for identity verification are more secure and accurate than traditional methods of asking for physical ID or manually checking client information on a system.
Simplicity and efficiency
The procedure itself is easy to follow and understand. However, the huge benefit is moving from a bunch of physical paper, you have to re-arrange to a paperless office and only deal with data, information, and digital signatures.
On the other hand, efficiency is the digital procedure itself. Data errors, internal handling management, and time management are carried out much more efficiently. Here are some ways the digital on-boarding process brings inefficiency:
- E-signatures: you don’t have to call someone to sign a paper anymore. It’s all done remotely, and this doesn’t only save time but also saves tons of energy.
- Elimination of data errors: data and all signatures are now captured correctly, so you don’t have to worry about missing signatures or empty fields on the paper forms.
- Mobile alternative: it’s much easier to sign on mobile than on a desktop. Giving customers the ability to sign from the mobile device removes all barriers and allows them to choose the way they like to work.
Eliminating in-person visits of clients reduces the time and effort required for them to accomplish the process. That said, digital customer onboarding can increase your customer acquisition rate.
Compliance
Digital onboarding means you continuously comply with processes that constantly check and onboard sole traders, corporates, charities, customers, and more. Moreover, they can access large amounts of business data, including the company’s name, structure, director’s details, and credit scores.
Financial institutions that use digital onboarding can verify their clients’ identities and screen them for potential financial crimes, which are requirements of the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.
On the other hand, this technology can help healthcare facilities ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This law sets strict standards for protecting patient data privacy and security.
Improves customer experience
Happy customers will always come back for more and tell others about your company. But, on the other hand, the opposite can happen, when a customer isn’t satisfied, bad comments about your services can spread quite quickly. After all, word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool, and the user experience determines a brand’s reputation.
The digital onboarding process gives a first impression of what your customers can expect from you and how smooth and easy the customer experience is with your product and service. Moreover, they ensure that the interface is easy to use and fast. Considering that the digital world is evolving so quickly, it’s becoming a requirement for businesses to stay updated with current trends and be quick and flexible with their services.
Prioritizing the client
Keeping your client at the center of attention is the only way you can succeed in growing a business. Moreover, it doesn’t only mean collecting data from your consumers but also understanding the prospect’s needs. A digitalized workflow and experience allow the workflow to be built around the customer’s preferences.
After all, clients want real-time and quick feedback, and the digital onboarding process allows this to happen by reducing completion time. The procedures for validity that are checked with data entry all reduce time consumption.
You may ask how prioritizing the client directly affects your relationship with them?
Well, digital onboarding is a personalized and adaptable experience, so it’s one of the primary ways you create a sort of partnership with your clients. Onboarding is the first step in continuing the customer experience and a process that will last longer than the partnership with your client.
After all, you should never forget that the digital onboarding process gives a better chance of acquiring new customers. Since they’ve taken lots of time and effort, they acquire these new customers by selling them their products and services. In fact, 86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience, so the statistics show you everything.
Streamlining the admin
A vast problem with administration and traditional onboarding was the countless paperwork they had to do. Not only was it time-consuming, but difficult to manage at times. Moreover, in today’s dynamic business environment, it’s no longer a profitable option since you have many new clients coming in. Especially when you have to fill in many application forms!
However, with digital onboarding, this doesn’t happen. Instead, everything is stored in a database, and people can sign documents at any time where you can assign these documents to a specific folder. Additionally, you can determine the documents you want clients to read or sign when you use the proper software.
Operational efficiency
The time and costs reduced on paperwork make it possible for businesses to improve operational efficiency. The right tools help reduce a bunch of workdays into minutes if you have the right customer onboarding tool and follow regulatory standards.
There are so many time-consuming tasks when running a business, especially if you are in the banking industry. For instance, the digital onboarding process helps reduce dependency on branches with banks and allows you to relieve your team from complex tasks. Additionally, it helps businesses increase employee productivity, add value to a business, and expand their reach across locations.
To make the digital customer onboarding process more effective, consider outsourcing managed help desk services. They can provide technical support, especially for complex IT problems your team might encounter in the process. Utilizing this service can be cost-effective, as you don’t have to hire an in-house team to oversee this complicated task.
Moreover, managed help desk services offer flexible and scalable support options to meet your business needs. They can also provide multi-channel support, including email, chat, phone, and social media. You won’t have to worry about missing any customer feedback or concerns with such services.
How necessary are digital tools?
Technology is evolving fast, and new tools are being created every day to help make things easier for us. But, as a business or, even more importantly, when you are a financial institution, you must be ready to provide the best customer experience possible. After all, customer experience and satisfaction are crucial and above everything else.
It’s now time to take a step back, analyze what needs to do in your business, review, and focus on how you can improve the customer experience in every step of the customer journey. Digital onboarding undoubtedly should be part of your business strategy as it’s part of the improvement process.
Additionally, digital tools help you stay updated with market trends and ensure your business consistently delivers innovations to its solution, giving you a significant advantage over your competitors.
Moreover, to give you a short overview. Here are some great tools you can consider using for your customer onboarding process:
- Inline Manual
- Walkme
- Userpilot
- Appcues
- Hopscotch
- Whatfix and more
Even though we gave you many recommendations, it’s best to research which platform best fits your business needs. If one of these tools offers any free trials, try them out and see how well it does with the customer onboarding process. Additionally, don’t forget to compare prices between the platforms. One may offer higher quality than the other at the same or even a lower price.
Wrapping it up
That’s all for this article. These were our top ways to benefit your business from using a digital onboarding process. What kind of experience the customer gets when interacting with your brand says a lot about your business. If your customer isn’t satisfied, your business is in trouble.
Furthermore, traditional customer onboarding processes only made it more challenging to manage important documents. The amount of paperwork and organizing employees had to do wasted their time and increased costs for organizations. The digital world has granted us the power to eliminate physical paperwork and allows the digital world to take care of these complex tasks.
You aren’t only saving time but also increasing employee productivity. These are the many benefits digital customer onboarding offers. Now, it’s time for you to implement what you learned!
Digital Web Services (DWS) is a leading IT company specializing in Software Development, Web Application Development, Website Designing, and Digital Marketing. Here are providing all kinds of services and solutions for the digital transformation of any business and website.
