How might we improve engagement and bring banking convenience to customers using an omnichannel platform integrating all social media and messaging tools in the market?
Background/Context
The COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst that drove the world into a digital lifestyle. It motivated customers to seek services like contactless banking, managing personal budgets, purchasing gift cards and more, right from the comfort of their phones. This explosive growth of customer interaction touchpoints has blurred the lines between traditionally defined channels. Banks now realise they must change the way channels are built and managed.
Omnichannel banking is offering the same set of services to the customer across all the channels whether they are digital or offline. In terms of banking, it means that the users can avail all the banking operations from a website, mobile app, social media, messaging apps, bank’s branch, or any other available channel.
Specifically in India, multiple solutions have been and are being built on mobile to engage customers. However, powerful messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Wechat, Viber, etc are emerging to become primary engagement tools among the consumers in the banking sector. Creating a robust omnichannel banking platform is surely the next step for banks to offer top-notch customer experience to their users. In coming years, we might see retail banks ramping up their omnichannel infrastructure to compete with FinTech enterprises.
Objective
Kotak Mahindra Bank is looking for innovative omnichannel solutions that can make WhatsApp, Telegram, Wechat, Viber, etc an integrated banking platform to better engage customers and offer banking services.
Solutions
The desired solution should fulfil the following requirements:
- For initial submission, we are looking for a minimum of prototype/MVP.
- The product/solution should be backed by need analysis, competitive mapping & market mapping.
- The solution should be standalone and have clearly defined UI/UX parameters.
- Solutions that help with discoverability, increasing adoption and improving customer retention on these platforms will get special consideration.
- The omnichannel platform should include the following features:
- Making payments (voice based, Peer-to-peer payment, etc.)
- Evaluating & applying credit cards
- Booking transportation
- Purchasing insurances
- Budgeting and planning
- Investment management
- Utility bill reminders & one tap payments
- Context-aware notifications
- Image recognition
- Advanced geolocation
- Value added banking services
- Loan applications
- SME banking products (payroll management, etc.)
- Promotions & cross-selling
- Online shopping
Additional innovative solutions can also be considered.
Reward
- Successful company will conduct a pilot project with Kotak Mahindra Bank spanning three to six months to validate the solution and eventually enter into a commercial deployment immediately after incorporating all the learnings from the pilot phase. Strategic investment possibilities from Kotak Mahindra Bank are there as well.
- The pilot project will be supported by a SGD20,000 grant from Enterprise Singapore and close guidance from the Kotak Mahindra Bank team.
Resources
- Kotak Mahindra Bank Application [Google Play] [App Store]
- WhatsApp Banking
