Mobile Technology in Banking

What does an Octopus and ‘mobile’ technology have in common?

If trying to resolve multiple company goals simultaneously is like a game of ‘Whack a Mole,’ as noted in my last blog, can ‘mobile’ be the octopus holding the hammers?

I do not believe that any single solution or strategy can be a panacea for achieving all goals, but thinking about what you can do with ‘mobile’ does make me optimistic that we can start to positively influence multiple goals in the same strategy.

So what is ‘mobile’? I am thinking about ‘mobile’ as the ability to create self-service portals and just have them follow you about,  always on, always accessible, always connected— intelligently. I spend my lunch break paying some bills online, and looking at a targeted credit-card offer for that new simple rewards card that I saw on TV. At the end of the day, I am home,  sitting on the sofa with my smartphone, when I go back into my bank account, the mobile app should be clever enough to know I was browsing that offer, and when I go back in it loads up a ‘would you like to apply for it’ screen.  Yep, good idea, I think that would be a good move, click!

What I like about the possibilities of mobile is that if you do it properly it has the ability to just make sense to us, the consumer. It should join all the dots. It’s what technology would be if people who didn’t write technology wrote technology! It would just know. Have I wandered from omni -channel into omni -presence?!

And now there is something called geo-location, so now my mobile tech knows where I am. Now it can sell me sunscreen when I am in Florida and warm fluffy boots when I am in Greenland. Or at least the financial services equivalent, perhaps travel insurance and credit limit increases for people traveling?  Wouldn’t it make sense if my bank knew I was in Europe so my credit card wouldn’t be blocked for out-of-pattern spending? Conversely it should know that if my card is being used in Europe, but my mobile device is active in my hometown of Boston, a red fraud flag should be raised!

So the ‘octopus’ thing about ‘mobile’ is that you can do more than one thing at a time. That means offering a great service and great customer experience, cutting operational costs, and raising revenues all at once!! Whack!

One last and very important word of caution though: if your self-service portals are not well designed, and idiot proof (thinking personally!), then you can actually drive calls into your call centre, and you’ll definitely miss at least one of those moles!