Digital account opening and customer onboarding best practices
Exploring the state of digital account opening and customer onboarding experiences in today’s business environment
Organizations know that providing an exceptional digital customer experience is a necessity to attract and retain customers in highly competitive environments. This is especially true when it’s not possible to differentiate based on product offering alone. In such cases, organizations need to focus on the experience, service, and convenience they provide.
Account opening and customer onboarding are critical stages in attracting new business and contributing to customer retention. They are often among the first areas that organizations look to digitize.
Despite the push for end-to-end digitization of account opening and user onboarding processes, many organizations, most often financial institutions, are still dealing with legacy systems and apps that present a functional barrier to accelerating their digital projects. The result is a lengthy, semi-digital process that is difficult to get through for staff and customers alike.
In this article, we look at ways organizations across industries can streamline their account opening and digital onboarding solutions to deliver a convenient and effective customer experience.
Streamlining customer data capture
Typically, the first step in the account opening process involves customer data capture. This is the stage at which the customer enters their personal details.
Data capture remains a cumbersome process, whether manually (where the customer shows up at a branch for a face-to-face questionnaire), or digitally through inflexible, static PDF forms.
Applicants should be able to provide information on their own devices from almost anywhere, without the need for an in-person appointment or branch visit. A streamlined digital process must be fast, user-friendly, and less prone to errors.
Digitizing identity verification
Organizations invest large amounts of money every year to attract and acquire new customers. Yet, much of the money spent getting applicants to respond to marketing offers is wasted when applicants hit a barrier and drop out during the account opening process due to a poor onboarding experience.
A report by Sapio Research in November 2022 on behalf of ABBYY examining industry trends in online account origination, digital banking, and consumer abandonment highlighted some striking figures. They found that
for 90% of organizations, friction during the digital account opening process caused abandonment rates of up to 40%
and in some cases even more.
The top reasons given for abandonment included:
- too many manual steps
- the process is too long
- friction caused by KYC (know your customer) and identity verification requirements
To improve the customer journey during identity verification, organizations can leverage ID document verification functionality to verify the identity of an applicant. Document verification is an innovative approach to digital identity verification that offers a strong alternative to traditional and in-person verification methods, enabling organizations to keep the workflow 100% digital and reduce abandonment as a result.
Organizations can use identity verification solutions to reduce friction in the account opening process and leverage real-time government ID verification to help reduce the risk of identity fraud.
ID document verification involves verifying the authenticity of an individual's ID document, such as a driver’s license, passport, or government ID. This is typically done in combination with a form of biometric verification, such as facial comparison, which utilizes a selfie image to verify that the person presenting the ID is the same individual whose portrait is on the ID.
To ensure the accuracy of the biometric verification process, liveness detection technology is used to identify any attempts at spoofing, such as masks or photos of photos, and to confirm that the selfie being presented is genuine.
Digitizing document approval and signing with eSignatures
Once the customer’s information has been collected and their identity verified, standard follow-up is for both parties to sign an agreement to make the relationship official.
eSignatures enable documents to be digitally signed easily and securely, setting the process up for customer and organizational success.
Maintaining a human touch during digital account opening and onboarding
To achieve a successful onboarding flow in a world where digital is becoming the norm, account managers must balance the convenience of the virtual world with the personal touch of the real world. Customers expect their financial service provider, telecom provider, and even healthcare provider to offer the same digital experience they are receiving in other areas of their lives.
For instance, the proliferation of existing SaaS companies that improve digital experiences, such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or AI-based chatbots, are now proven and effective enablers of digital innovation.
It’s worth noting, automation is no longer enough. Security, human connection, and collaboration are needed. In a world where we are making more decisions and transactions on digital platforms, organizations need secure, virtual spaces where business processes and the creation and signing of agreements can take place securely.
Using video-based virtual environments, organizations can reduce their reliance on static online portals and offer customers the same face-to-face account opening experience they might expect to receive from a branch visit without the need for them to leave their homes or places of work.
This direct interaction allows customers to feel that their service is personalized, especially with higher-value transactions. This increases the value of their connection to the organization they are transacting with while also providing the service they need.
The levels of security and identity verification required for account opening can often be time-consuming for high-value clients in an in-person setting. This can take multiple visits to ensure all paperwork, applications, and identity verifications are completed. A virtual signing room allows for these applications and account changes to be made in real-time.
To strengthen security and compliance, video-based virtual experiences should also integrate digital identity authentication and verification to verify the identity of an applicant, as well as track compliance and non-repudiation.
OneSpan digital customer onboarding solutions
OneSpan offers various solutions to streamline and simplify digital customer onboarding. From OneSpan Smart Forms to Virtual Room, we can support your organization with a fully digital account opening process.
OneSpan Smart Forms
By leveraging OneSpan Smart Forms, organizations can create a more engaging, frictionless experience. Applicants can provide information on their own devices from almost anywhere ensuring they can pick up where they left off regardless of which device they use. Additionally, OneSpan Smart Forms saves information when possible and automatically adapts to asking new questions based on previous answers, reducing the repetitive nature of traditionally static online PDF forms and enhancing the customer experience
When all the questions are answered, OneSpan Smart Forms can automatically generate a signature-ready agreement that can be electronically signed instantly using eSignatures. This streamlined digital process is faster, more customer-friendly, and less prone to errors.
OneSpan Identity Verification
OneSpan Identity Verification provides a secure and efficient way to verify applicants’ identities. The solution's advanced technology offers accurate and reliable identity verification, protecting organizations from fraud and helping to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
OneSpan Sign
With OneSpan Sign, any business can create an agreement chain and include an unlimited number of employees as part of this chain. Employees can be given signature ability, view-only permission, or assigned any other necessary role.
Documents can be sent to an entire group of stakeholders at once or assigned a specific order in which to view or sign documents. Using OneSpan Sign, those documents can be completed in minutes and passed to the next stage of the process to speed up the account opening and the digital onboarding of the new customer.
OneSpan Virtual Room
With OneSpan Virtual Room, advisors can help customers open accounts in real-time. Instead of multiple back-and-forth emails or phone conversations to address questions and complete activities, digital account opening solutions like Virtual Room can help organizations provide a personalized experience, including real-time assistance that ensures top customer service and addresses questions to complete applications in a single session.
Robust identity verification enables organizations to verify both known and unknown applicants before the account is opened, and comprehensive audit trails and the option to record the virtual session easily demonstrate compliance.
Transforming account opening with digital processes
In a world where new clients expect convenience and speed, it is essential that organizations respond to changing customer demand by offering a user experience built around digital channels.
Forcing a prospective customer to use multiple channels (branch, online, call center, etc.) or outdated processes, such as in-person identity verification, creates less-than-optimal first impressions and frustrations that can lead to account opening abandonment and negative customer reviews. Outdated processes can also impact customer churn metrics, as existing customers increasingly associate innovation (or relative lack of it) with the value of products or services.
The good news is that modern and effective approaches to digital account opening are available in the market today. These approaches not only help prevent application fraud but also reduce unnecessary friction in the customer journey.
Whether considering account opening, employee onboarding, client onboarding, or other forms of first-day processes and customer acquisition, organizations must embrace a digital transformation initiative to improve customer experience and engagement. These digitization efforts need to be optimized using innovative technology to deliver an exceptional digital onboarding experience, from beginning to end.
White paper
Rethink digital account opening for faster growth
Learn best practices from peers who transformed digital account opening.
Read now1 “State of Intelligent Automation Report: Customer Onboarding Drivers and Pain Points.” ABBYY, November 2022. https://www.abbyy.com/resources/report/customer-onboarding-drivers-and-pain-points/.
