Banks' great untapped asset – Business Daily
Customers being served at Family Bank Tower branch in Nairobi. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NMG
Today’s customers expect more from their banks including personalised service, real time solutions and the ability to do business when and how it is most convenient for them. To meet these demands, banks need to deliver more value at every opportunity through timely offers and interactions.
Bank executives can use real-time customer analytics to improve the customer experience. This involves using data to know, reach out, delight, and give customers a great experience.
The huge data that the banks hold can help to increase their preciseness, efficiency and proactiveness and ensure that the value of the customer engagement framework is enhanced.
When it comes to banking, Africa and especially in Kenya significant strides have been made in banking innovation. The mobile phone penetration has been a big boost to banking in Kenya.
The country leads Africa in the penetration of smartphone usage at 91 percent while the rate in Africa is at only 80 percent. These devices are driving one main resource that banks have a great opportunity to improve customer experience.
Joseph Theuri, a data scientist at Strathmore University, explains that it is high time the banks start considering the unstructured data they collect using mobile and digital banking products. “Banks have a great asset today to shape the kind of service they can offer to their customers”.
According to him, ATMs and bank account accounts to over 87 percent of the total data available to lenders. This is in agreement to Harvard Business school case by David Court and Dominic Barton, who emphasized that Analytics can work for you when you start with the right data.
Banks are today therefore faced by two main challenges. First, there is need to start with data strategy, culture and, architecture. Secondly is data analytics which affirms the idea that data is crude oil and can only be useful upon refined through analytics. Why should banks be focused on finding opportunities presented by this challenge?
The business game today is no longer just about products and services, but rather holistic, end to-end customer experiences. Great experiences create loyal customers and competitive advantage.
On the other hand missteps can create long-term damage. Banks therefore can use the huge data sets to identify the customer targets, attract and retain them.
For example, data analytics can help provide insights that will improve retention rates and drive value. Not all customers are created equal. Data analystics would help banks to figure out if the amounts spend in acquiring the customers delivers high quality clients.
John Olukuru is the Head of Data Science at @iLabAfrica- Strathmore University
