{"id":26,"date":"2011-10-28T19:41:43","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T14:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=26"},"modified":"2020-07-06T17:14:20","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T11:44:20","slug":"jumping-on-the-omnichannel-bandwagon-%e2%80%93-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/28\/jumping-on-the-omnichannel-bandwagon-%e2%80%93-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Jumping On The Omnichannel Bandwagon \u2013 Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Part-1<\/strong><\/a> of this blog post, we introduced the concept of omnichannel banking and explained how it differed from multichannel banking. We’d claimed that 100% multichannel support was neither necessary nor practical. In this Part-2, we’ll explain why.<\/p>\n

While banks have traditionally viewed their relationship with customers through the prism of channels, customers don\u2019t necessarily share that perspective. Customers just want to get the job done in the most convenient and secure manner possible. Besides, according to the recently published\u00a0World Retail Banking Report 2011<\/a><\/strong>, \u201c\u2026customers view the branch and internet as having different strengths. The internet excels in information gathering, transacting, and looking up account status, customers said. The branch is the preferred channel for solving problems, indicating the value of having a human touch in certain situations.\u00a0Mobile banking has yet to make a positive impression\u201d.<\/p>\n

No wonder customers in different countries expressed an overwhelming preference to open accounts at the branch even if most of them wanted to research new accounts online.<\/p>\n

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The above chart makes it clear that a majority of customers want to research online but buy at a branch.<\/p>\n

This clearly shows that fully fledged multichannel support is not really necessary.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s look at the feasibility of delivering 100% multichannel support.<\/p>\n

The typical retail banking landscape is dotted with a plethora of systems that have evolved over a period of several decades on mainframe, client server, Web 1.0 and other heterogeneous technologies. While allowing every banking transaction to be conducted on every channel \u2013 that is, providing 100% multichannel support \u2013 is technically possible in many countries, it would call for a massive overhaul of existing systems. Even in the best of times, the ROI for such \u201crip and replace\u201d projects has been uncertain.<\/p>\n

So, fully fledged multichannel support is not practical either.<\/p>\n

Good news is, customers are increasingly displaying omnichannel behavior, and banks can jump on the omnichannel bandwagon quickly.<\/p>\n

Omnichannel behavior is the broader adaption of \u201comnichannel retailing\u201d, a term we first heard about from\u00a0Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner of\u00a0Retail Systems Research<\/a><\/strong>, who, in turns, credits it to\u00a0Leslie Hand of IDC.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>It refers to increasing consumer readiness, or even preference, to use\u00a0more than one channel to execute a single transaction\u00a0<\/em>provided there\u2019s \u201csomething in it\u201d for her.\u00a0Point to note is that the behavior is voluntary and not forced upon the consumer by the business whom she\u2019s dealing with.<\/p>\n

I can readily relate to omnichannel behavior from my own experience of buying a Palm T|X PDA in London a couple of years ago. Starting with a Google Search, I landed on PriceGrabber.co.uk, an excellent price-comparison website. PriceGrabber listed several deals and informed me that the \u201cbuy online, collect at store\u201d one offered by the leading electronics retailer Curry\u2019s Digital was the best. I placed the order on the retailer\u2019s\u00a0website<\/em>\u00a0and made the payment\u00a0online<\/em>\u00a0and was happy to collect the product from the retailer\u2019s nearby\u00a0physical store<\/em>\u00a0in Canary Wharf instead of having it shipped to my home address since I wasn\u2019t sure if I\u2019d be home when when the consignment arrived.<\/p>\n

While online only meant Internet at the time, it could very well include Mobile and Social Media today. With mobile apps like\u00a0RedLaser<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0making child\u2019s play of doing price comparisons at the store, omnichannel behavior is \u00a0bound to become\u00a0de riguer<\/em>\u00a0soon.<\/p>\n

With most banking products being intrinsically more complex than retail goods, we expect omnichannel behavior to gain traction very quickly in retail banking. It\u2019s not difficult to imagine a scenario where a potential customer hears about a new banking product on Facebook, gathers more information about it from the bank\u2019s Internet Banking portal and finally visits a branch to seek face-to-face advice before deciding to buy it.<\/p>\n

On the face of it, it might appear that banks have to first get their multichannel strategy right before they can think of omnichannel banking. We feel differently. In Part 3 of this post, we\u2019ll suggest ways by which banks can jump on the omnichannel bandwagon even if they\u2019ve missed the multichannel bus. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Part-1 of this blog post, we introduced the concept of omnichannel banking and explained how it differed from multichannel banking. We’d claimed that 100% multichannel support was neither necessary nor practical. In this Part-2, we’ll explain why. While banks have traditionally viewed their relationship with customers through the prism of channels, customers don\u2019t necessarily … 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-26","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\/26","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=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7086,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/7086"}],"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=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}