The financial industry is one of the leaders of the digital revolution in business. Few organizations have embraced tech advancements as quickly and efficiently as financial institutions. For example, they pushed the development of self-service by deploying ATMs and mobile banking. Today we can enjoy completely digitized financial services. We can download our bank’s mobile app or log into their platform to transfer money or claim credit within minutes.

Banks, financial advisors, insurance companies, and credit unions are constantly in competition to provide more effective customer experiences, which drives the deployment of new financial tools. However, having a top-notch financial platform isn’t enough!

We can all agree that the success of financial services greatly depends on client trust. This sector deals with the most sensitive client data, including credit card numbers, deposit values, and credit balances that have a significant impact on their future. Thus, clients want to cooperate with an institution that they can fully rely on.

This need for reliability drove financial institutions to stay modern at the unfortunate cost of personal interactions.  This is a huge oversight because human-like communication is the best way to build a trustworthy relationship. Luckily, there is now a modern solution- a live chat for financial services!

Let’s see how live chat can benefit your business and grow your revenue!

1. Offer online support solutions

Providing online financial solutions has become a norm of a business success rather than a novelty. This is a winning business strategy as 63% of clients see online financial capabilities as an important factor when choosing an institution. However, this requirement isn’t easily fulfilled with a user-friendly platform and mobile app. You also need to take a comprehensive approach and offer online support.

It is beneficial to have an AI chatbot and knowledge base. However, live chat has shown to be extremely effective when aiming to gain client trust quickly. Moreover, live chat is a top customer preference, with 41% of consumers preferring to use live chat over a phone call (32%), email (23%), or social media (3%). Wouldn’t you like to turn this majority into your loyal clients?

2. Nurture proactive assistance

Live chat enables you to reach out to your clients! This proactive approach mimics the employee greeting received by any client upon entering your company building. However, it is more than that!

You can proactively set up triggers for when a potential customer has visited three or four of your web pages and recorded an inactivity time of about 3 minutes. This alert can signal that your customer is struggling or hasn’t made a purchasing decision yet. Thus, your support representative can pop up in a live chat and offer to help with any issue they may be facing. As you can see, the live chat is your sales representative too! Financial services don’t offer ”buy now” buttons; therefore, this online technique is super helpful for driving sales.

3. Clients expect instant answers

We live in a world where real-time communication is common. The busy and rapid pace of our lives demands instant solutions but phone calls can often be time-consuming failures. When calling, your customer risks being passed along to many departments and agents or waiting on hold for a long time. A simple phone call can be a very stressful experience. With live chat widgets, a customer can be sent directly to the agent or department that can solve their problem most effectively.

Another way to route your customer request is to find where it originated from. For instance, if it's coming from a public site you can send the customer directly to the sales department. However,  if it’s a login issue on an authenticated site then you will need to connect the customer with your IT professionals.

The beauty of live chat, for both reps and clients, lies in the history feature. When your support reps can’t answer a client's question and need to send them over to someone with a higher level of expertise, the new person will have the overview of the whole conversation. This chat history capability eliminates the need for the client to repeat their issue over and over again,t which was definitely one of the main pain points in the customer support industry for so long!

4. Maintain personalized customer experiences

Carefully delivered, personalized customer service is the foundation of today’s customer-centric approach. The emphasis is on tailoring the service to your clients needs if you want to retain them. New client acquisition is costly and not knowing your customers’ previous experiences, personal details, or, in the worst-case scenario, drawing a blank on their names can cost you even more!

5. Cut support costs

Customer support technology is here to help you make more money quickly. With live chat, your support reps can multitask and easily answer up to 10 clients at once! This is a stark contrast to a phone call support method where your rep can spend over an hour chatting with one customer. A Forrester study revealed that live chat saves 17%-30% compared to phone support costs! This extra money sounds great, right? The American Airlines Federal Credit Union (AAFCU) is a great example of how beneficial live chat can be in terms of costs--they experienced a tremendous 20%increase in savings!

However, it is not just your reps that can multitask with live chat. .Clients also prefer this method to other channels because it allows them to multitask too!

In addition, when you compare the training required for phone calls versus live chat, the live chat investment is incredibly lower. Live chat also makes it so much easier to deal with angry customers because they can’t yell at your reps! Therefore, you can expect a higher employee satisfaction level as well! Remember, a happy employee means a happy client!

6. Analyze the efforts

Not analyzing your efforts is like walking with a blindfold! The same applies to your live chat for financial services. With the right customer support software, you can get  comprehensive analytics on the overall customer lifecycle, including their live chat experience! This practice will allow you to make data-driven improvements to deliver excellent customer experiences consistently and keep your institution’s reputation intact!

7. Provide language-friendly chat

If your business operates globally then live chat is necessary! In this scenario, you will not only be dealing with different time zones, but you will also have to navigate different languages! Live chat can solve these issues and spare you from struggling to hire in different countries.You only need a live chat for financial services that will translate each conversation. It is mission impossible to help your customers without speaking their language!

8. Create pre-chat surveys

Pre-chat surveys are rapidly gaining in popularity! By asking a few intro questions, you can learn about your clients. This will give your agents more time and adequate background information to prepare for a quality conversation.

9. Get instant customer feedback

Why not take a post-chat survey as well and discover how successful your support reps were? This is a useful technique for identifying your pain points. Customer feedback will allow you to make informed tweaks, provide additional training, or maybe even redefine your current customer support policy and procedures!

10. Guarantee the security of all their assets

There is a lot of noise around cybersecurity these days, especially because the pandemic made it easier for hackers to target businesses. This raises the question: “How can I fight against those numerous malicious attackers, especially in finance where there is so much to protect?” The answer can be found by adding the latest private cloud-based customer support software to your toolbox! Email is the least protected support tool whereas live chat is the most secure option.  With customer support software you have complete control over your database, which is a highly coveted feature in the world of shared servers among millions of users!

11. Listen to the key players

American Airlines Federal Credit Union is one of the live chat pioneers and has been using this tool since 2002! Other companies followed their example! Thanks to live chat, BofA is now reportedlydoubling ddouble numbersity numbers and increasing their online mortgages eight-fold.  and Nasional City has attribut six times higher conversion rates to their live chat usage! Would you like to join the club? If your answer is yes, then get your live chat for financial services today!