One in four people have considered switching to a new bank. If you’re a banking or financial services provider, that means a quarter of your current customer base is thinking of walking out the door. Why? It often boils down to trust in your brand.
So, how can you boost brand trust to improve your customer retention rate and attract new customers? One critical step you can take is ensuring you have good in-app support. Below, we go over why brand trust is especially critical in finance and how providing a quality customer experience can potentially increase customer loyalty and slow churn.
Why does finance app trust matter more than in other industries?
Brand trust is critical for any business, but it’s especially vital for financial service institutions. Research shows that trust is the number one factor for choosing a bank or other financial services provider. Below, we explain why.
The stakes are higher for customers
Finance risk inherently changes customer expectations. This is an industry where the stakes are high. After all, your customers are trusting you with their:
- Savings
- Pension
- Personal information
None of that is given over to companies lightly. In fact, research by McKinsey shows that customers value trustworthiness almost as much as they do price when making a purchasing decision.
Customers expect your business to provide consistent, reliable information and communication. Despite our fast-paced digital world, nearly two-thirds of customers say trustworthy information is more important than speedy service interactions. That means accurate and timely communication is critical to creating a positive customer service experience.
Yet there is a huge gap between the customer experience most companies provide and what customers want. Research from the Consumer Bankers Association shows that while eight out of 10 banking leaders believe they provide good customer experiences, less than a quarter of customers agree. This can have a critical impact on the success of your banking or financial institution.
The impact on the customer experience (and your brand)
If your brand isn’t able to provide accurate answers to customer queries, it doesn’t just create friction in the customer experience; it can create perceived risks for the customer’s financial safety.
That perceived risk, whether legitimate or not, can have real-world consequences for your brand. If customers have a poor customer experience, they’re likely to engage in what J.D. Power calls "soft switching." Changing bank accounts is extraordinarily difficult. So, instead, customers open a second account at a separate institution. Over time, these customers transfer money from their existing account with you to their new account with a competitor.
Rather than formally closing their first account, customers simply stop using it. The bottom line? If your bank isn’t delivering the in-app experience customers expect, it leads to a loss of trust, and they’ll likely go elsewhere.
Where do traditional support models fall short?
Traditional support models often create inconsistent support experiences, forcing customers to navigate outside the app for help, and potentially requiring multiple interactions to resolve a problem. This is where finance app customer support strategies must evolve. Without a modern support approach, customers may experience increased frustration and a poor customer service journey.
Siloed customer support
Traditionally, many companies use a multichannel customer service model. Multichannel customer service allows your customers to access help through the app, email, chat or by calling your contact center. However, these channels are often siloed.
So, a customer who starts in the app and is unable to get an answer to their question may find that the answer differs depending on whether they call to speak to an agent or send a secure email. This inconsistent guidance can erode trust in critical moments, such as trying to activate a new card, transferring funds or making a payment.
Technology limitations that often hinder scale
As financial institutions grow, many find their support infrastructure struggles to keep pace with new features and evolving customer expectations. Legacy contact center systems and tools can make it difficult to update help content consistently when products change, which can create a disconnect between what the app actually does and what customers expect it to do.
As support ticket volume increases, this often leads to longer resolution times and inconsistent guidance across channels, especially during high-impact moments like payments, account changes or transaction issues. Over time, that friction can undermine customer confidence in your brand and make it harder to deliver a reliable experience at scale.
The emotional impact on customers
All of these things can lead to the customer having to repeat themselves or force them to reach out to your company multiple times about an ongoing issue. This can lead to longer resolution times and increased customer frustration.
As a result, customer rage may increase. This rage can spill out in the form of negative online reviews, angry phone calls or even on social media. These negative reviews and social posts are seen by other people, meaning that poor customer service not only damages trust with the customer in question, but may make it more difficult for prospective customers to trust your brand.
How can my team provide good in-app support?
Improving customer app support is critical for brand trust and business success. Over half of customers say that apps are their preferred way for managing their banking. That’s because in-app support makes it easy for customers to get the help they need. When done right, it builds trust by giving customers reliable, consistent guidance without having to leave the app, creating a more streamlined customer service experience.
So, how can you make sure your company delivers the best mobile app customer experience possible Below are a few key considerations.
Use onboarding to create a strong first impression
The customer onboarding process is critical for setting the tone of your relationship with the customer. Research shows that nearly seven out of 10 customers have abandoned the onboarding process with a financial services provider.
Why? Often, it’s due to lengthy onboarding processes. This is especially true for Gen Z customers. However, it’s not just unique to your younger customer base. In fact, 50% of customers will abandon efforts to open an account if it takes longer than five minutes.
So, what can you do to streamline the onboarding process? If possible, consider leveraging self-serve onboarding. This ensures customers don’t have to wait for an employee. Additionally, where permitted, consider using autofill for entering relevant information, allowing customers to upload documents through the app or automating processes for verifying a customer’s identity.
Finance apps have to carefully balance creating an onboarding process that’s fast, secure and as frictionless as possible.
Harness the power of omnichannel customer service
Omnichannel customer service is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have for fintech brands. Unlike multichannel customer service which is often inconsistent and siloed, omnichannel customer support ensures a cohesive, unified experience across all channels.
What makes omnichannel customer service so powerful is that it retains context from one platform to the next, ensuring the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves. For example, a customer that starts out by calling into your bank can receive a message via SMS that redirects them to an interactive tutorial in your app.
This reduces friction in the customer experience and allows for a streamlined experience across the customer lifecycle. It also shows the customer that you’re a source of reliable information, which can build trust and foster a strong customer relationship. Some additional benefits of omnichannel customer support may include:
- Reduce the risk of customer churn
- Drive digital adoption by redirecting people to engage with your app
- Faster issue resolution for customers (since context is retained)
Use in-app support to build trust and drive long-term loyalty
Trust is paramount for a successful customer relationship in any industry, but this is especially true for financial services. Customers trust banks and fintech companies with some of their most sensitive information, so it’s vital to provide them with consistent and reliable customer service to foster trust and long-term loyalty.
To do this successfully, don’t overlook the importance of using in-app support to meet the needs of today’s finance customers. Meet them where they are, which is overwhelmingly in your mobile app. By showing them that they can depend on you for fast, reliable in-app customer support, you can potentially boost customer retention and long-term loyalty for your brand.
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