The Village Bank delivers a premium digital banking solution with a next gen design and a strong implementation plan.
For many community bankers having the best digital banking experience is a key strategy to grow market share while having the ability to leverage this channel or virtual branch to maintain a connection with their customers. In today’s fast-paced world, more and more consumers and businesses are looking for self-service, easy, intuitive solutions to manage their finances. These increasingly tech-savvy users look to their bank to be a consultant, partner, and provider of their all their financial health needs. Recognizing this opportunity to pair financial advice through technology while maintaining the community bank high-touch commitment to service, The Village Bank launched a project to offer a new digital experience to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Through their partnership with COCC, The Village Bank was able to conduct a successful execution that created excitement and showcased their ability to provide advanced financial banking services while keeping the community connection with their customers at the forefront of every decision.
Modernizing the Digital Banking Experience
The Village Bank selected COCC’s digital banking solution for its’ sleek, modern interface and responsive design that makes the user experience on a mobile device or desktop simple, easy, fast, and extremely feature-rich with an intuitive experience. Their customers can manage their finances from wherever they are, whenever they need to. Offering a flexible solution allows them to service their customers and community in a whole new way.
Eager to improve and upgrade their customer experience, The Village Bank decided to be one of the first test institutions for COCC’s new interface. “The Village Bank was excited to partner with COCC as the beta tester and early adopter” said Slater Cram, Vice President of Digital Banking at The Village Bank. “We strive to bring our customer base the latest and greatest and we appreciated the time spent researching features and functionality to help create a responsive and easy to use design.”
Moving to the new digital experience was the best way to deliver this latest and greatest technology to their customers. Their goal was simple – create a campaign that brought awareness and excitement while promoting their position to support the financial health of their customers through technology. They knew they needed a solid plan to communicate their future enhancements through a multichannel approach that stretched across the Bank.
Building a Successful Implementation
The Village Bank consistently communicated with customers to build excitement and ensure they were aware a new digital banking experience was on its way. They created a landing page on their public website to display the new look and feel, created “how to” resources, social media updates featuring new functionality, as well as held face-to-face conversations with their customers to highlight the new experience. Through multichannel messaging, the bank was able to inform its customers of the upgrade as well as generate buzz and anticipation for the enhancements well ahead of time!
“We knew we needed to make sure our customers were aware of our new technology stack and wanted to share the excitement that we felt with them.” said Susan Salecky, Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer at COCC. The Village Bank started with a friends and family program to beta the new experience which was a tremendous success. Now came one of the most important steps, rolling this out to all their customers.
“We had a teaser marketing campaign on our website as well as announcements on other marketing channels,” said Cram. “This was important to let our customer base know a change was coming. It was as much an awareness campaign as it was a way to generate excitement.”
Generating excitement and awareness are not the only communications required, according to Cram. While it provides an intuitive interface, any change to how an app looks can become confusing. To avoid what Cram called “historically the biggest obstacle” of not knowing where to go to complete your routine transactions, The Village Bank posted instructional videos on their website. “We found that by creating ‘how to’ videos we were able to identify a highly effective way to head off these concerns and support questions,” Cram noted. These videos not only became an added resource to the bank’s multichannel customer support, but this became a shining example that showcased how The Village Bank will always continue to look for ways to engage, build and host open levels of communication with their customers.
Delivering the Experience
The Village Bank has become known as a pillar of trust and security within their community, an accomplishment that has taken time and hard work to maintain over the decades. Their customers trust them with their financial health to make the best choices, and this is not something the bank takes lightly. When The Village Bank was presented with the opportunity to improve the digital banking space for their customers, they wasted no time in implementing this change.
The overall move to the new digital banking experience was quick but resulted in immense growth for the bank while providing dividends to their customers and community. With the newly enhanced interface, updated promotional opportunities, and modern digital banking design, the bank effectively created a better user experience. The success of this transition was due to the bank being able to implement a personal and engaging communication plan that was executed perfectly thanks to a consistent flow of videos, updates, news, and enhancements which showcased how the bank was always placing their customers best interest at the forefront.
The successful launch of COCC’s digital banking solution further sets up the institution and its customers for long-term growth and financial security. The Village Bank has effectively delivered exceptional financial products and services to be broadcasted to a wider audience because of this transition. They have seen an uptick in use of their money management and credit monitoring features, with a rise of nearly 25% in its in-app credit monitoring and doubled their money management activity, further driving engagement and becoming the primary channel for finances. Ultimately, The Village Bank created a winning scenario, showcasing an advanced fundamental experience builds the trust of their community by acting as a true partner fully invested in their customer’s needs.
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