4 Finance App Requirements for 2021

COVID-19 hit finance apps with a one-two punch, and many brands are still adjusting to find their new normal. Between heavy increases in usage as well as staggering drops in economic activity, 2020 was a roller coaster for banks, insurance companies, budgeting apps, and everything in between.

While we saw DAU stay consistent for traditional banking apps this year, DAU spiked for budgeting apps, insurance companies, credit score apps, and other mobile-first brands in the finance category. As these spikes begin to level out, brands are assessing how they can keep their increased engagement by improving their in-app offerings and functionality. But the competition is fierce, and the finance app category is packed.

To help your finance app stand out in 2021, focus on these four strategies at the start of the new year.

1. Measure and act on customer emotion

Money is highly personal, and given the intensity of emotions associated with money, it strikes us as odd that more financial institutions have yet to tap into this gold mine of customer emotion data and CX insight.

If you haven’t embraced a customer-centric approach to CX and feedback, it’s time to start. Once you start incorporating empathy into your customer experience and humanizing your communication, people will respond in powerful ways.

Specifically for finance apps, measuring and acting on emotion data can help:

• Gather feedback about new products or updates to existing products
• Understand differences between mobile and brick-and-mortar experiences
• Gain context and get more out of NPS scores
• Target loyal customers to join special programs
• Intercept negative reviews and drive five-star reviews
• Identify gaps in communication and onboarding
• Provide better, more effective customer service
• Inform or validate your product roadmap
• Prevent churn and improve retention
• Remove silos between product, marketing, and customer service

2. Prioritize customer retention over acquisition

The lifetime value of a finance customer is higher than most other industries, so when a customer does leave, it’s a much bigger hit to the company. Given this, loyalty and trust between the company and the customer is absolutely paramount.

Finance app customers tend to have a lower bar for happiness and are less of a “risk” for change because their expectations of the app are lower than consumers of apps in other categories: frequency of use is lower (e.g. consumers don’t open the app every day), in-app actions they take are lower (e.g. consumers don’t browse but rather tend to have one or two tasks in mind), etc. But what this also means is that if their trust is compromised, the likelihood of gaining them back as a customer in the future is tremendously low.

Finance apps ended the last year with an average of 32% of new consumers retained, showing signs for improvement in 2021.

3. Invest in strong mobile security

Having your financial information at your fingertips comes with a catch: security. Between GDPR, CCPA, and the almost daily emerging stories about the ways in which Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms are being abused by political and criminal actors, the average person now has a much greater understanding that their data is being used constantly and not necessarily with their permission.

As such, it’s imperative financial apps have a robust sign-in process to protect customer’s information. For example, fingerprint authentication or facial recognition is a great start in making signing in to finance apps both secure and convenient.

Finance app publishers also need to go the extra step in protecting their customers’ privacy while soliciting for feedback. If you’re using a third-party vendor to assist you in gathering customer feedback, make sure you partner with one that is able to gather feedback over time that’s tied to one profile, but that can still stay anonymous when needed.

4. Improve app store ratings and reviews

This is perhaps one of the most common challenges for financial apps product managers. A mobile app with a negative rating serves as a poor reflection of a company and often turns people away from even downloading the app.

For example, as StockTwits increased their focus on the mobile platform, they realized raising their 1.5-star rating would be an important first step. Using Apptentive’s Love Dialog combined with the Message Center, they were able to direct questions, concerns, and complaints to customer success managers rather than into negative reviews on the app store.

On the flip side, they directed anyone who answered “Yes” to the Love Dialog to leave a positive review on the app store. This helped deflect all bad reviews and fill the store with positive ones. As a result, they dramatically increased their app store ratings from 1.5 stars to four stars.

In-app feedback tools powered the conversations that taught StockTwits what their customers wanted, needed, and expected from the mobile app. Based on these conversations, StockTwits was then able to implement a strategy to regularly fix and improve what mattered most to their customers.

Other financial apps can replicate this success by identifying their fans and pointing them toward the app store. They can then identify unhappy customers, pinpoint problems, and add solutions to those issues to their product roadmap. Ultimately, this will result in more positive reviews and happier customers.

Apps in the finance category are uniquely positioned to turn customer feedback into their secret weapon. In a space crowded by competition, listening to and acting on customer emotion can set you apart.

Of course, Apptentive would love to help you better understand what your customers want, but we want to understand your needs to see where we can be of service, even if it means pointing you in a different direction. Get in touch to let us help, or leave your thoughts in the comments below for us to get a conversation going.