Authored by: Zakir Ahmed, Senior Vice President & GM - Asia Pacific & Japan at Kofax
 
“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” This well-known saying withstands the test of time, and it speaks volumes about the importance of that first, ever-important customer interaction. A positive initial customer experience gives companies a competitive advantage, especially those operating in the financial services and retail markets. A positive customer onboarding drives higher retention and the willingness to pay a more premium price on upsell opportunities.
 
The first interaction customers have once they purchase a product or service is the onboarding process. What does yours look like?
 
If it’s slow, manual and clunky, you’re turning off customers before you’ve had the chance to nurture a sense of brand loyalty. However, a fast, efficient and streamlined onboarding process creates a favorable impression, one that wins over customers from day one and keeps them coming back for more.
 
But there’s another side to onboarding that companies can’t afford to ignore—fraud. Unfortunately, the pandemic hasn’t helped the situation. Andrew McClenahan of LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ Federal Government Solutions team reported that “. . . as stimulus checks went out in the spring [of 2020], fraudulent transaction volumes increased by 35%.” McClenahan also reported an increase in bot attacks in e-commerce and financial services, rising to 32% and 38%, respectively.
 
So here’s the rub: while customers want a fast and easy onboarding process, organisations need to find a way to capture, validate and continuously monitor customer identities—without increasing customer friction. Risk management, data security, digital transformation, compliance and marketing leaders must learn and implement best practices to balance streamlining digital onboarding with fraud prevention measures. Intelligent automation technology—specifically digital identity processing—provides the necessary tools. Companies can automate business-critical workflows that are essential to effective customer onboarding while delivering best-in-class fraud protection capabilities. A win-win!
 
Three ways digital identity processing prevents fraud
 

1. Mobile ID verification: When you provide mobile ID verification to customers, they can snap a photo of their driver’s license, passport or national identity card with their smartphone and upload it to your system. The digital content is optimised, image enhanced, extracted and validated using advanced, automated neural networks and multilayered image filters to confirm document authenticity. ID verification is an essential step in fraud prevention, and customers love the ease of mobile upload.

2. Facial recognition technology: How can companies be sure an applicant hasn’t stolen someone else’s identification? Facial recognition technology combines military-grade liveness detection with auto-capture to confirm an applicant is, in fact, taking a live picture of themselves. Intelligent automation technology makes a side-by-side comparison of the applicant’s video and selfie image to the picture on their ID. The applicant is only validated if a match is confirmed.

3. Mobile ID framework: Know Your Customer (KYC), and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations are constantly changing. An Intelligent Automation platform eases the compliance process for financial institutions. Process orchestration technology extracts information and submits it to other enterprise applications for further processing.

 
The blueprint for a better customer experience
 
Digital identity processing also enables organisations to gain an advantage over the competition through a seamless onboarding process that creates happy customers. We already mentioned the ease afforded with mobile ID verification. Still, there are other features to look for in a unified solution so you can build a blueprint for an effective onboarding process.
 
Compliance: In addition to KYC and AML regulations, organisations also have to abide by other regulations such as GDPR and Terror Funding legislation. Compliance must remain front of mind throughout the entire onboarding process. Delays frustrate customers, but software robots can automate customer due diligence, such as KYC checks. You can verify data against internal and external databases and reduce errors in the compliance process.
 
Intuitive and simple user experience: Customers (new and existing) don’t want to waste time figuring out how to use your digital platform. The best solutions are intuitive. When it comes to a banking or retail mobile onboarding program, ease-of-use is a top requirement for customer retention. A simple step-by-step journey should guide users through the process with little-to-no sticking points.
 
Powerful administration tools: Even an advanced digital onboarding system needs a strong management team behind it. Success simply demands it. The best solutions give administrators the ability to securely review all identity and compliance data – including facial images, document uploads, and watchlist results. An Intelligent Automation platform gives managers a 360-degree of the onboarding journey. Real-time visibility lets you manage every step from start to finish.
 
Speed: Today’s customer is more impatient than ever. A slow onboarding process gets you off on the wrong foot and sours customers’ opinions of your business. An intelligent automation platform equipped with mobile capabilities makes an efficient, streamlined onboarding process a reality. Robotic process automation (RPA) automates time-consuming tasks. Artificial Intelligence technology such as natural language processing (NLP) streamlines document processing. Low-code and no-code development capabilities empower business users and citizen developers to build-and-run digital workflows that further streamline the onboarding experience.
 
Financial services and retail organisations need a competitive advantage to thrive in today’s turbulent market. A superior customer experience starts at minute one on day one, with a quick and straightforward onboarding process. But organisations can’t rush through critical verification and due diligence processes.
 
A unified intelligent automation platform equipped with advanced digital identity processing capabilities slashes customer onboarding times from days and weeks to minutes and hours. You get the peace of mind that your customers are who they say they are, and your customers get the modern experience and ease that engenders loyalty and repeat business.