Due the Covid-pandemic, many companies have lost a lot of revenue on their stores this year. However, many companies underestimate the significant losses caused by incomplete online purchases. In fact, several different international studies show that up to 80% of initiated online purchases end up abandoned. Any investment that was made to bring those customers into the online shop are therefore lost. While unexpected costs that appear just before the final transaction are a factor, the main reason cited for the high rate of purchase abandonments is the complexity of the registration process required to buy the product in first place.
If retail companies manage to lead only 20% of all customers through the customer journey (the so-called onboarding), just how successful can a company like financial services be while required by lawmakers to fulfil sophisticated compliance regulations. In summary: The Onboarding in regulated industries ends up taking too long, being too complex, and very expensive. Why, you may ask? The answer lies in the lack of automation. Now customers are facing user-unfriendly processes, that force them to accept long wait times during an opaque procedure. The resulting number of drop-outs feeds directly into the amount idle costs within the marketing budget. After all, every customer who begins the onboarding process was already won over by the marketing and willing to expend in the company or the product. The company simply lost them at some point of the way to the finish line.
Online customers expect online transactions – be it the purchase of a sweater, the conclusion of an insurance contract or the opening of a bank account – to be quick, convenient and uncomplicated processes. Companies will need to utilize modern onboarding systems that allow as much flexibility as possible, in order to keep them from losing expensively acquired customers in the middle of the registration process. These systems have to keep up with changing demands from the company as well as new compliance regulations that may be decided on, while also providing a user-friendly interface to turn as many prospective clients into actual customers as possible. The formal transaction and payment process should be easily accessible within the procedure. Nowadays, suitable solutions are realized by integrating Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products. The Cloud-approach minimizes internal IT-expenses, any worry about up-to-date compliance procedures as well as the costs for an effective customer journey to a high degree.
Advances in technology result in continuous optimization and any new compliance requirements are automatically available by updating the existing modules. The system runs all legally required verifications in real time. By adapting the onboarding flow to customer expectations, the process becomes intuitive to the customer and doesn’t require any additional instructions. As a result, drop-out rates fall while the number of successful customer onboardings rises. The risk of false statements and data errors is lowered, which means that less time and costs have to be spent on correcting costumer data. But first and foremost: the idle costs in the marketing budget are reduced dramatically. These systems make sure that online customers, whose importance cannot be stressed enough while facing the holiday season during the covid-crisis, will not be lost at any point of their journey.