Enhance customer onboarding to build trust

We all know the saying, “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” That’s why your customer onboarding is critical for your business success.

Customer onboarding sets the tone for the customer’s entire relationship with the company. Studies have found that people make their first impression of a company website in as little as 50 milliseconds(or 0.05 seconds).

A massive 63% of customers consider the onboarding process when deciding whether to invest in a service or product.

But for financial services, online wagering and gaming, crypto, and other regulated industries, customer onboarding comes with the added complexity of strict Anti-Money Laundering(AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.

Customer due diligence processes such as identity verification are a non-negotiable part of the onboarding experience. However, there are ways to maximise compliance without compromising the customer experience.

In fact, with the right technology, you can create an exceptional customer onboarding experience that builds trust and reduces fraud. Win, win.

Here are three essential strategies:

1. Remove unnecessary barriers

The hard reality is that any friction in the onboarding process will lead to dropouts. If people find it challenging to deal with you before they’ve even become a customer, they’ll stop and go to your competitors.

Any extra (unnecessary) form fields, checks and processes in the onboarding experience add time, effort and frustration for the customer.

One step that will inevitably add time and frustration during onboarding is manual Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. KYC is mandatory for compliance and, therefore, a non-negotiable part of onboarding processes for regulated businesses.

However, some companies haven’t yet implemented electronic identity verification, which means manual reviews add unnecessary time to onboarding processes.

This requires new customers to go offline and gather very specific documentation, which unbanked individuals or those who don’t have a passport or driver licence may not have in the first place. Once customers submit the required documentation, the manual review process can range from hours to days, depending on the company.

The impact on your customers is clear: when opening new accounts or applying for loans, 40% of consumers admit to abandoning a financial service onboarding process due to lengthy, time-consuming verification processes and issues with filling out paperwork. (source)

Online customers expect some friction, but it is relative to the service they are requesting. For example, customers are increasingly understanding that setting up a new bank account requires certain levels of identity checks. However, they still expect these checks to be carried out quickly in line with other digital experiences.

This is where automated identity verification checks come in. An automated identity verification solution, like GBG’s, means you can verify the customer’s name, address, date of birth and document credentials against the industry’s most extensive data sources on a single platform.

With access to an unrivalled level of data, it’s possible to identify even the hardest-to-verify individuals and onboard more new customers instantly without the time and hassle of extra manual checks.

2. Be transparent

Research by McKinsey that analysed the characteristics of the customer onboarding journey for banks found that three factors accounted for 42% of overall customer satisfaction:

• Transparency of price and fees
• Ease of communication with the bank
• The ability to track the status of the onboarding process

These can be distilled down into one key element:transparency.

Customers don’t want to be kept in the dark during account opening, wondering what hoops they must jump through next. They want to understand where they are in the process and the next steps.

This transparency and communication are essential in building trust with the brand from the start.

Consider how transparency applies to KYC checks. By ensuring customers know why identity verification is essential, you can start a dialogue about how the business is committed to protecting its customers.

Many consumers are unaware of the regulatory requirements behind these checks, so by telling them, they will appreciate that it’s for their protection rather than seeing it as an inconvenience.

Data protection is also top of mind these days. Therefore, telling customers how you protect any personal identifiable information they share for KYC checks is essential.

3. Speed it up

Today’s customers have a need for speed. Specifically, they don’t want any business to waste their time. By helping customers save time during onboarding, your business will instantly gain a reputation for convenience and speed.

There are many ways to add speed to onboarding processes, even during KYC checks. An automated identity verification solution can verify the validity of ID documents in seconds.

Recognising that every second counts, GBG’s identity verification solution seamlessly extracts and fills in data from customers’ government-issued ID documents into online forms, speeding up the application process.

Convert more customers simply

As the push for more robust anti-money laundering (AML) regulations grows, companies need to up the ante on identity proofing. But that doesn’t need to compromise the onboarding experience.

On the contrary, by implementing automated identity verification, companies can improve speed and convenience for customers and build all-important trust while strengthening fraud prevention efforts.