Man is a conversational creature. He learnt to speak and communicate, before he tried to barter or exchange. But, the advent of modern banking and its practices robbed the “conversation” in a transaction and made it all about submitting documents and filling forms, in duplicate and sometimes even in triplicate!!
Thanks to emergence of social media, customers are ruling the roost. The power that banks wielded to dictate forms and designs to customers have been quietly withdrawn from them. Banks are now sitting inside customer touchpoints, rather than customers coming to banking touchpoints. This change of location and context has brought about a transformation in transaction dynamics. Customers are no longer willing to switch context to make payments. They want to make a transaction from whatever app they are in, be in Facebook or Linkedin.
Facebook is coming out with a Buy button, so is Twitter. Facebook has integrated Uber ride hailing within its Messenger. Another classic case of transactions becoming conversational. You can transfer funds within Facebook Messenger to your friends, without losing perspective of your interaction.
This is where banks have to make a mid-course change in the way they engage with their customers. The craze for “everything transactional” introduced jargons like “Beneficiary”, “Standing Instruction” “OTP”, “Two Factor Authentication” etc. that seem to be forced fit into a retail user space. This leads to more confusion and a sort of fear or reluctance to adopt newer technologies. If banks have to really succeed, without intimidating their customers with lexicon, they need to think from a user’s perspective.
At Vayana, we have aligned our SolutionNET product offering to take note of this important transactional behavior. Our Mobile Banking application now comes with a unique Chat Pay feature that incorporates all key features of a transaction, but in a conversational context. Now, you can converse with your friends within the app, and perform fund transfers to them on the fly. Just choose your friend, and choose payment amount or enter your own. Once you provide your password, you are through. No forms, no jargons.
Keep talking, as conversations continue even after payments!! Human behavior is about conversing, not transacting. ChatPay brings it back to you.
