Improve retention by making your customers’ first experience with your bank as painless as possible

They say you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. For many banks, that first impression occurs during the onboarding process.

Issues with account signup or poor service can leave a lasting negative impression. However, a smooth onboarding experience backed by comprehensive support systems can create a customer for life.

Here, you’ll find helpful bank onboarding tips that consider the entire customer journey, from filling out an application to cybersecurity education.

For more information about all things digital banking, read our comprehensive guide, The Complete Guide to Digital Banking.

5 ways to improve bank onboarding for customers

The bank onboarding process is your first chance to wow your new customers with a seamless experience. The following tips will ensure your relationship starts on the right foot. For even more tips, be sure to download a free copy of The Essential Onboarding Checklist.

1. Develop a customer journey flow chart

Every customer’s financial needs are unique. However, the journey they take to create a new bank account will look very similar. Developing processes that make this journey as smooth as possible is a positive step toward boosting your acquisition rates. It’ll also make your new customers much happier with their decision to open an account with your bank.

Creating a banking client onboarding process flow chart can help you standardize this process and improve it for future customers. It provides a visual aid that lays out the logical flow from pre-application to account creation. It also includes all of the potential decisions a customer could make along the way. And when 80% of customers say that their experience with a company is just as important as the actual services it provides, it’s more critical than ever to anticipate customer needs.

For example, your flow chart may include a section for the customer application process. If the customer submits their application, they will move on to the next step. However, if they don’t, you can create additional steps to determine what prevented them from completing the form.

An effective flow chart will address every possible customer touch point with your bank. It will also address friction before it happens, ensuring consistency and quality for every step. Keeping the customer’s data secure and compliant is also much easier once you know what information you’ll need at each step.

2. Create digital onboarding processes to exist in parallel

While it’s essential to keep your in-person onboarding processes buttoned up, customers also want digital options. According to the v, 48% of customers prefer to use mobile apps to manage their finances. Another 23% prefer to use a laptop or PC. Only 9% like to visit their local branch. Consequently, developing digital onboarding procedures alongside in-person options will provide the best possible experience for your customers.

You can map many of the processes you’ll use for bank customer onboarding to digital equivalents. For example, new customers can submit applications via digital forms. Customers can verify their identity by scanning government-issued licenses and other documentation and uploading them to a secure bank server. You can also make follow-up confirmations via email or text.

Utilizing digital processes can also aid in-person onboarding. You can use state-of-the-art imaging solutions to capture digital copies of handwritten documents. Once scanned, this information will live on the same secure storage as your digital onboarding forms. This creates a single source of truth no matter how customers or employees access this information.

3. Gather and implement customer feedback

As customer needs evolve, so must your onboarding processes. However, unless you have the correct data, you won’t know what needs to change — or what’s working just right.

Placing customer survey actions at the end of the onboarding journey will help you gain insight into how effective your processes are. These surveys don’t need to be drawn-out affairs. Even a single question asking how satisfied the customer was on a scale of one to ten can tell you a lot about whether onboarding is working. Once you know if your customers are experiencing unnecessary friction, you can drill further into what’s causing it.

With digital onboarding, you have many more options. You can surface these surveys as a natural part of using the website or mobile app. If you go this route, consider using unobtrusive messages or onscreen prompts rather than pop-up windows.

Additionally, heat mapping tools provide anonymized data about how users navigate your digital presence. By embedding unique code on your website, you’ll see what buttons they’re clicking on or areas they spend a lot of time on. This information lets you adjust the design and layout to make future onboarding easier.

Whatever you want to improve, you need to take the data your feedback provides and make regular, iterative adjustments. That way, you’ll be able to hone in on the most compelling aspects of your onboarding processes while chipping away at the parts that pose the most problems.

4. Offer comprehensive support

No matter how efficient your onboarding is, some customers will have questions. To reduce the potential for frustration, make sure they have an easily accessible way to contact you.

Telephone support lines, email, and chat systems are perfect ways to provide support during business hours. Implementing these options allows customers to choose the most convenient contact method.

While you may be unable to respond immediately outside of business hours, you can still offer support. Consider creating an online knowledge base and filling it with responses to commonly asked questions. In addition to providing 24/7 support, this online source of information can also reduce the incoming query volume, allowing your support staff to dedicate their time to more difficult requests.

5. Make security and fraud education part of onboarding

Cyberattacks against banks and personal financial accounts are on the rise. In fact, phishing attacks — attempts to gain unauthorized access to account information by sending messages that pretend to be from the user’s bank — made up 41% of all cybercrimes in 2022.

Hackers are getting smarter, relying on AI tools and spoofing a bank’s fraud department phone number. Educating customers about how to defend themselves against these attacks can seem like an uphill battle. However, your onboarding processes are a great way to put this information front and center.

During onboarding, consider adding a section that informs the customer about bank policies regarding data security. Lay out how your bank will — and won’t — contact them about their account information. Educate them about common methods cyber attackers use to gain access to accounts, as well as how to detect suspicious activity. By educating customers, you can give them knowledge that complements your own security efforts to reduce the likelihood of an account breach.

Our recommendation: RICOH fi-8170

Even in an increasingly digitalized industry, there are still banking documents that need to be converted to electronic files. Those in the market for a bank onboarding document scanner have no shortage of options. We take great pride in having spent the last 50+ years researching, designing, and developing some of the most advanced and powerful electronics in the world, including our professional grade fi and SP series of scanners.

Built to purpose for the most demanding document handling jobs, fi and SP scanners are capable of processing tens of thousands of pages per day at the highest levels of accuracy. Their intuitive integration capabilities with all existing work suites minimize time-to-value for businesses looking to invest in tools that will pay dividends for years to come.

The RICOH fi-8170 is designed to handle the modern bank’s most demanding workflows. Fast, double-sided scanning of up to 70 pages per minute keeps the bank onboarding process moving. And its proprietary Clear Image Capture technology ensures that captured data is clear and accurate. Click here to learn more or shop the rest of our production scanner line.

Note: Information and external links are provided for your convenience and for educational purposes only, and shall not be construed, or relied upon, as legal or financial advice. PFU America, Inc. makes no representations about the contents, features, or specifications on such third-party sites, software, and/or offerings (collectively “Third-Party Offerings”) and shall not be responsible for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of such Third-Party Offerings. Please consult with a licensed professional regarding your specific situation as regulations may be subject to change.