Over the past year, banks have been using technology to create new channels of communication, with the hope of deepening consumer loyalty. As other traditional benefits are swept away, can a multichannel approach be enough keep consumers from switching.
Last month, market research firm eMarketer released a report that banking online deepens customer loyalty among banks. This research should be valuable to banks considering a J.D. Power & Associates study found that retail banking consumers are shopping and switching banks faster than ever. The main reason being life circumstances such as; divorce, unemployment or moving.
The eMarketer study also mentioned the preferred banking method for U.S. consumers was online banking (44%) for ages 18 – 54 in 2010 and second most popular for those age 55 and older. Not surprisingly, for 18 – 34 year olds branch banking was the lowest among the age groups at 20 percent. This same age group pretty much never uses mail (1%) and had the highest usage of mobile banking at 4 percent.
With so many channels of communication available, the study determined that “online banking customers are more likely than offline customers to take advantage of additional services with the same bank,” and in the end, “are less likely to switch to another bank.”
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