What is digital onboarding and why does the experience matter?
Digital onboarding relates to the acquisition of customers online rather than on-premise, usually via a website or mobile app. Instead of filling out forms in person, digital onboarding involves the customer completing a series of automated steps that usually involves the provision of personal data, which is authenticated by technology running in the background, to guarantee that they are who they say they are.
In an increasingly ‘always on’ world where customers are accustomed to having immediate access via their fingertips, digital onboarding offers a quick and seamless way to sign up for a new product or service from wherever they are, whenever they choose. For retailers, it offers a faster, more efficient road to customer acquisition. It also means all data exists on one platform and is easier to process.
Onboarding is a vital stage in the customer lifecycle as it sets the tone for their future relationship with you. Get it right via a robust and intuitive process and you could very well convert a new customer into a loyal one. Get it wrong, and they will become frustrated, give up and likely opt for a competitor – the dreaded customer churn.
As a result, digital onboarding is quickly becoming an important battleground for retailers. Customers want the process to be fast, frictionless and straightforward. Retailers seek the very same, yet the remote nature poses a very significant challenge – the impact of inaccurate and potentially risky data entering their system.
The challenge of digital onboarding – identity verification
As digital onboarding involves no face-to-face interaction, it is vital to have identity verification and validation procedures in place to ensure new customers truly are who they say they are. Achieving this requires retailers to offer new customers a frictionless user experience that maintains sufficient security processes yet avoids making the process so onerous that they become frustrated and drop out before completion.
This poses several questions: how do you reduce friction, digitise communications, and ignite a superior user experience? What steps need to be taken to automate this critical process and how, as a retailer, can you ensure you are capturing valid, accurate data that can fuel decision making and improve results? The foundation for success is three simple principles:
- Make it as easy as possible. Take the time to go through your digital onboarding process and see if you can make it easier for the customer. You can remove any unnecessary steps or information that could prevent your customers from moving through the process quickly and easily. You’ll want to get the customer through the process as quickly as possible and make it painless.
- Allow for multichannel onboarding. Building digital onboarding around an omnichannel strategy ensures that customers may access the organisation in whatever way is most convenient to them. Whether it be on their laptop at home, on their mobile phone at work, or on a tablet while traveling. For this reason, you must ensure that your digital onboarding solution can work across multiple devices and channels.
- Choose the right data validation solution. Implement real-time, built-in checks at multiple data points to ensure a potential customer really is who they say they are, and their details are captured accurately; without impacting the customer journey.
Best practices for data validation and streamlined digital onboarding
Experian’s world-class real time data validation tools can help you take control of your onboarding process.
By implementing robust, automated checks, at the point of entry, we can help you provide the best onboarding journey for every customer. By opting for a blended, multi-layered approach, you will maximise the number of “good customers” you can onboard, whilst protecting against risks such as fraud.
In our experience, the most successful onboarding modernisation projects include the following key components:
- Data Validation at point of capture for critical contact data elements like billing addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.
- Data matching capabilities to search and match to existing records to ensure the correct serviceable footprint and that no duplicate accounts are created.
- Data enrichment to gain valuable insights into your target audience and use this knowledge to enhance their experience and build brand loyalty.
- Customer segmentation to add a deeper layer of insight into the shopping habits, preferences and behaviour of the existing and prospective customers of retailers and brands in order to target them with relevant, personalised campaigns.
Benefits of real-time data validation and digital onboarding
Experian can help streamline processes and reduce friction during onboarding, enabling companies to engage with their customers in the places and on the platforms they prefer. As a result, our customers have been able to achieve:
- Improved data accuracy and completeness of client profiles
- Increased self-service success rate
- Greater operational efficiencies
- Reduced friction
- Improved conversion
An example of benefits gained from a robust onboarding process can be illustrated by digital media business, Digitalbox. They implemented our email validation solution to capture valid email addresses as customers signed up for online competitions and special offers. With a window of opportunity of around 30 seconds to capture this information, Digitalbox must ensure accuracy — highlighting and helping customers to correct errors that may be caused by a typing mistake or a more deliberate attempt to withhold information. By adopting our email validation solution, Digitalbox can identify incorrect addresses almost instantaneously. As the customer enters their address; formatting is assessed; typing errors are picked up; deliberate errors highlighted, and deliverability checked, all in a fraction of a second. Where an issue is detected, a polite message is generated asking the consumer to check their email address is correct. Digitalbox has estimated this has saved them around £75,000 in wasted marketing spend as a direct result of improving email accuracy.
Yodel, a long-standing Experian partner, saw significant benefits to their delivery success rates when they leveraged our address validation solution. The company has introduced comprehensive quality checks when customers visit their website to arrange a delivery or collection, eliminating potential data errors. Our solution quickly checks and returns the full, valid address which is then enriched with key location attributes, such as latitude and longitude coordinates, and unique property reference numbers, before it enters Yodel’s database. By incorporating our technology, Yodel’s first-time delivery rates increased by 5%, which is the equivalent of 300,000 additional parcels reaching their intended destination every year.
As retailers strive for a safe and accessible digital onboarding process, there are many component parts that can be used to prove customer identity. The key is determining which elements give the greatest level of confidence whilst protecting the consumer, being inclusive to all, and not hindering the customer journey. Our data validation solutions combined deliver the modern digital onboarding experience that customers have come to know and expect.
Are you looking to modernise your customer onboarding experience? Speak with an expert today.