Differentiating yourself as a modern bank involves far more than building out new products and services. It also requires shifting clients’ perception of your bank—and encouraging them to take advantage of these new offerings. This is easier said than done, especially since new offerings often require customers to take a technological leap or grant access to sensitive data. 

But with the right messaging, timing, and content, banks can translate new tools into new growth:

Demonstrating trustworthiness

A precondition for getting consumers to adopt modern banking services is trust. For legacy banks, this requires a demonstrated track record of keeping users’ funds and data secure—and a (potentially newfound) emphasis on cutting-edge tech that keeps clients safe. For challengers, meanwhile, trustworthiness may mean having senior leadership with extensive experience in banking, while also demonstrating the unprecedented nature of the kinds of products and services they provide.

In this respect, translating trustworthiness into customer adoption entails both transparent content as well as long-term success.

Finding the right timing

Customers are often most primed to adopt new products and services during major changes in their life—switching jobs, for example, or buying a new home. Modern banking services use customer data like direct-deposit information to anticipate these changes, and help customers steer themselves toward relevant, helpful services.

San Francisco-based SigFig, for instance, which recently launched a modern meetings platform for banks and FIs, also offers data pipelines that help bring consumers toward decisive sales and servicing conversations. By being able to intervene at the right time, banks can both showcase their concern for clients’ well-being while also maximizing the ROI of communicating sensitively with clients.

Iterating through feedback

Modern services also have to adjust to fluctuating user needs and tastes. AI-powered chatbots have taken off in recent years, such as Bank of America’s Erica. But the chatbot still only covers a specific subset of use cases, presumably both due to technological hurdles as well as consumer apprehensiveness about artificial intelligence. 

Staying at the cutting edge technologically—and thereby boosting a bank’s brand as well as sales opportunities—therefore requires keeping an ear to the ground, and ensuring that trust and timing are part of technological-development strategies as well.