As digital banking has evolved, financial institutions have acquired new ways to reach their customers. However, these communications are often less than meaningful. For example, a bank may send an email to notify a customer that they have a low account balance when many customers are already painfully aware of this fact.
In the case of alerts, these communications are often vague and, in the worst cases, irrelevant, more of a nuisance than helpful engagement. In the How Customers Really Feel about Alerts: They’re Annoyed report, Lea Nonninger, Digital Banking Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, examined how customers respond to alerts and how financial institutions can leverage this underutilized channel to develop customer engagement.
Standing Out in the Sea
To gauge the effectiveness of the alert process, Nonninger researched the commonalities among customers who are dissatisfied with their banks’ notifications.
“Overall, we did find that there are quite a few consumers who are not happy with the alerts that their banks are sending, which wasn’t all that surprising,” Nonninger said. “I think that’s something banks have been struggling with for years, which is a shame because it is such a key way for banks to reach out to their customers, especially with consumers focusing more on the digital banking relationship.”
Instead of being a conversation starter, alerts have often turned users off. These customers can quickly become desensitized to alerts and to other communications, and that’s a significant missed opportunity for banks, leaving customers to their own devices to conduct their financial lives without guidance from their financial institution.
Even when alerts are relevant, as many consumers are inundated with a daily flood of notifications. These emails, texts, and push notifications come from an array of organizations, and it is a struggle for banks to stand out amid this sea of information.
Another reason banking alerts are often lost in this notification bombardment is that many are vague or generic. These communications often get mistaken for marketing attempts.
“There doesn’t seem to be a great distinction between what’s an ad and what’s something that’s meant for me,” Nonninger said. “An alert should be something that’s personal to the customer, for example to alert them of fraudulent activity in their account like abnormal spending—going as far as spending insights into whether they’ve spent more or less in the month or don’t have enough funds to cover upcoming payments.
“But if banks aren’t able to bring that level of information across to the customer, they will just ignore it—and then the whole thing is lost.”
A Call to Action
One of the keys to making alerts more beneficial is ensuring that the communication does not start and end with an alert. Instead, each alert should be treated like a first engagement in an interactive relationship.
“For me, the biggest advice would be that every engagement and every notification should always have a call to action, a next step,” Nonninger said. “What can a customer take away from this? If there isn’t anything to take away from it or if there aren’t any actionable next steps, then how valuable can that alert really be for someone?”
Although many alerts contain relevant information, they are often superfluous because they are retrospective. Nonninger found that many customers said their bank didn’t alert them to critical events until days after the occurrences.
When there is no value to the alert, the banks’ brand and messaging are compromised. As banks seek to optimize these communications, they should consider the recipient.
“It shouldn’t just be one alert and that’s done,” Nonninger said. “Banks should also be asking the customer: How do you feel about that alert? Is that alert useful? Would you like to know more? Asking for feedback allows the FI to personalize that interaction to the customer. This helps to avoid customers getting the same notification over and over again that they don’t care about, while also opening the opportunity for customers to opt out of some alerts—and opting into others.”
From Afterthought to Priority
This personalized alert process can be a critical mechanism for financial institutions to start conversations with customers. However, alerts are often an afterthought within banks’ apps or websites.
The alert settings are often tucked away within dedicated alert dashboards or even behind multiple menus. Even once customers find them, many alert settings aren’t explained clearly, making navigation difficult.
For example, a financial institution may group alerts by accounts or cards, but this categorization may not be clear to the casual user who is searching for one setting. This added complication creates another missed opportunity, as most customers aren’t likely to scour alert dashboards to make their desired selections.
Even rarer in apps and websites is relevant guidance from the financial institution as to how users could better leverage alerts. For example, the bank could suggest that a fraud-conscious customer opt into an alert that notifies them when any large purchase is made on their account.
This guidance should not end when the customer makes their initial alert selections. Consumer preferences shift over time, so organizations should solicit continual feedback on how to make alerts relevant and engaging.
“A key thing would be for banks to allow for customization and personalization,” Nonninger said. “I think the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t apply for alerts. People interact so differently with their banks, and a lot of customers aren’t aware of all the options that they have. It’s up to the banks to reach out to the customer proactively to show what kind of alerts are available and not just leave it to the customer to explore the apps.
“How often do you go into the settings of your banking app and look at all the alerts that are available to you? For the bank to be proactive and start the conversation themselves, I think that’s really important.”
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