{"id":17,"date":"2011-10-15T22:19:45","date_gmt":"2011-10-15T16:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=17"},"modified":"2020-07-06T17:14:30","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T11:44:30","slug":"jumping-on-the-omnichannel-bandwagon-%e2%80%93-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/15\/jumping-on-the-omnichannel-bandwagon-%e2%80%93-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Jumping On The Omnichannel Bandwagon \u2013 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enough and more has been written about how banks lack fully fledged multichannel support. For the uninitiated, a \u201cchannel\u201d refers to the medium of communication between customers and businesses such as retail banks. Branch, Phone (call center),\u00a0ATM, Internet Banking, Mobile Banking and Social Networking are typical channels in the context of a retail bank.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMultichannel support\u201d means the bank permits a given transaction to be executed via more than one channel whereas a bank offering \u201cfully fledged multichannel support\u201d allows\u00a0end-to-end<\/em>\u00a0execution of\u00a0each and every transaction\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0each and every channel <\/em>without\u00a0forcing the customer to use a particular channel due to deficiencies in its internal systems.\u00a0For example, if a prospective customer wants to open a checking account online, a bank providing fully fledged multichannel support would allow her to do so\u00a0completely<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>on its Internet Banking portal without compelling her to visit a branch. Likewise for other channels.<\/p>\n

The degree of multichannel support offered by banks varies from product to product and from one bank to another. Let\u2019s take the example of opening a checking account. Most banks in India only let prospective customers research products and download blank application forms online. Applications must be completed on paper and signed in wet-ink and the applicant must visit the branch in person to submit documents proving her identity and address. On the other hand,\u00a0this bank in Australia<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0lets its prospective customers research products on its new-generation website, complete forms online and insists on a branch visit only to verify the applicant\u2019s identity. If we take mortgage applications as another example, most banks fare quite badly with multichannel support. As a friend was telling me recently, he visited the websites of more than five banks, all of whom promised online mortgage application. However, all of them stopped after the first screen displaying product details and asked him to submit his contact information so that someone from the bank could make contact with him in the next few days (Apparently, only one bank got back and, that too, after two weeks, but that\u2019s another story).<\/p>\n

Digital banking pundits are clamoring for banks to offer 100% multichannel support. In the case of checking acount opening, this would mean that the applicant visits the bank\u2019s website, applies for a suitable product online, uploads scanned copies of her identity and address proof documents to the website, the bank verifies everything in realtime and issues an account number to the applicant within a few minutes. With the mortgage application, fully fledged multichannel support would result in the loan amount credited to the applicant\u2019s account within a few minutes of applying for a suitable mortgage product. No branch visit is required in either case. Now, this is only a demonstration of fully fledged support of the\u00a0online<\/em>\u00a0channel. To attain the mark of total multichannel support, the bank would have to deliver similar functionality over telephone, mobile and social media.<\/p>\n

We believe that 100% multichannel support as described above is neither necessary nor practical.<\/p>\n

In Part-2 of this blog post, we\u2019ll explain why. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enough and more has been written about how banks lack fully fledged multichannel support. For the uninitiated, a \u201cchannel\u201d refers to the medium of communication between customers and businesses such as retail banks. Branch, Phone (call center),\u00a0ATM, Internet Banking, Mobile Banking and Social Networking are typical channels in the context of a retail bank. \u201cMultichannel … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6,9,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b2-product-v-services","category-bfsi","category-ecommerce","category-retail","category-mandatory-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7083,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/7083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}