Driving Customer Retention Through Behavioral Banking

Historically, many banks have taken a demographic approach to serving and engaging with customers. Often, they have been segmented according to their age and income, and a basic set of products has been developed and promoted to meet their anticipated needs.

But age and income factors are not enough to make customers feel that their personal needs are really accounted for and addressed. The aim is to develop and serve up products and services that are tailored to the different phases of a customer’s life and their everyday behaviors – a combination of their life stage (which is easy to get) and their lifestyle (which is hard to get and even harder to translate into business actions). By aligning life stage and lifestyle factors, banks can ensure they meet the evolving needs of their customers. And, as a result, they can deepen customer relationships, boost retention, and increase their total lifetime value.

In this paper, Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA) explores the concept of behavioral banking, investigates the impact on customer retention, offers some best practice examples from around the world, and provides a proven, three-step approach for banks to follow.