Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio regional bank Dollar Bank is streamlining new customer onboarding via mobile to eliminate early abandon rates and ensure it is reaching consumers wherever they want to use the banking service.

The bank is leveraging a solution that brings on new mobile customers within less than four minutes, requiring little text input from the user through GPS, imaging, email address parsing and numerous other features. The endeavor will likely eradicate the numerous abandonments that come from customers accessing the mobile site for the first time.

“Streamlining the customer onboarding experience is critical to compete in an always connected, highly informed, multi-device environment,” said David Albertazzi, senior analyst at Aite Group. “Over the last few years, financial institutions have been undergoing tremendous changes.

“These adjustments have been driven largely by profitability pressures and changing consumer preferences,” he said. “While banks may look to the myriad regulatory requirements and conclude that they cannot afford to allocate much to client experience initiatives, they must reconsider this assessment and identify initiatives that can both meet the needs of regulators and ensure their long-term competitiveness.”

Streamline customer use
Dollar Bank will be creating a better brand sentiment in the eyes of consumers, and expanding new customers rates through its new focus to optimized mobile customer onboarding. The least amount of effort a customer has to undergo in signing up for a new service or using digital platforms, the more likely they are to continue engagement.

The more steps it takes for consumers to complete a task through mobile the more room there is for them to drop out, and abandon creating a new checking account all together. Dollar Bank is working hard to eliminate this issue, and is doing the work for customers rather than having to input a large amount of text themselves through its mobile Web site and application.

The regional bank will be leveraging technology developer Gro Solutions to ensure the experience is optimized specifically for mobile, to ensure an efficient experience for new mobile customers. Dollar Bank decided to take this route after discovering that 70 percent of consumers prefer to open a new checking account through digital platforms.

Dollar Bank will also be developing a mobile app for employees to better serve customers and bring them onboard while attending off-site locations at events and at its bricks-and-mortar locations.

The new focus will create a more cross-channel seamless experience, making sure to have an optimized use on all platforms.

Shifting to mobile
Similarly, digital retailer eBags implemented a shift in its strategy, which will focus on mobile-first technologies and innovations, an approach that coincides with an overall goal of introducing ingenuity wherever possible (see more).

Also, an executive from The Limited at eTail East 2015 explained that the retailer is focused on mobile growth for the future, as the technology is in constant upheaval and requires significant effort to stay on top of the latest developments (see more).

“Banks should look to solutions that are adaptable to changing consumer preferences and changing regulatory requirements,” Mr. Albertazzi said. “Application forms and underlying business rules will change often.

“Solutions that enable banks to efficiently change the user interface and business rules across multiple devices through one centralized process should be prioritized,” he said. “Regulators will continue to ensure that financial institutions are delivering solutions that are in the best interests of consumers and that they are not taking undue risks.

“To accomplish these objectives, regulators will require more documentation of the sales process and they will investigate this documentation. Firms that are still storing key client documents in paper format will have trouble responding to information requests of regulators in a cost-effective manner.”

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Commerce Daily