APAC Credit Cards: How Can You Create Incredible Customer Experiences?

From cashback to air miles, there’s no reason why eligible consumers shouldn’t take up a credit card to get their hands on the rewards.

But, with so much competition in the market, how can credit card providers capture the attention of consumers? And how can providers make sure that they’re constantly keeping up with consumer preferences to ensure strong retention?

The answer is to create amazing customer experiences. Here are some tips based on our research.

1. Focus on what matters

With so many offers out there, prioritize what matters most to your consumers.

In Singapore, conversations around credit card rewards focussed heavily on cashback, totalling thousands of mentions in 2019, indicating a strong consumer interest in this area.

In our Consumer Trends for 2020 report, we surveyed consumers using Qriously and found that they are most concerned with security, affordability, quality, and convenience when choosing a financial services brand.

And in our recent report of Fintech in APAC, we were able to find out what consumers in APAC typically talk about spending their money on.

These conversations and survey results can help inform the offers and messaging a financial services brand chooses to push – the more relevant they are, the better the chance of hooking new customers.

There are a plethora of ways to learn about what your consumers value using digital data sources alone. Take advantage of these sources using the right digital consumer intelligence solution and you could be on to a winner both with new business and retaining your current customers.

2. Be flexible

In our recent report on APAC Consumer Trends for 2020, we observed that there were a lot of negative emotions (anger and sadness) being expressed by consumers when it comes to their banking experiences.

This indicates a big opportunity here for banks – by monitoring key conversation trends from consumers online, banks can find useful insights for improving experiences in real time.

Some of the negative comments we picked up online were around the strict criteria banks impose that make it difficult for consumers to benefit from the use of these cards.

By listening and learning from these conversations constantly, issues can be quickly addressed to ensure consumers remain loyal to your brand. Making small tweaks to existing offers can make a big difference in the short and long term.

3. Time is of the essence

There may be an industry-wide understanding of seasonality in banking but sometimes, by studying the habits of consumers, analysts might notice that there are lesser-known opportunities out there to be seized to gain that competitive edge.

For example, you might assume that consumers are most active online during the weekends.

However, in 2019, we noticed that the volume of online credit card conversations in Singapore occurred during weekdays, indicating that users may prefer to take a break from thinking and talking about banking on Saturdays and Sundays.

By knowing when audiences are most engaged and what they are interested in at different points in time (especially if you can be targeted), ads and messaging can be tailored to meet consumers where and when they will be most effective.

Together with first party data, you can use online data to identify the key periods of prime opportunity.

Get Consumer Fit in 2020

There is no denying that focusing on customer experience is key to winning and retaining business.

Consumers are constantly sharing feedback online about their experiences, and studying public mentions relating to your industry or brand can be a great way to gather insights that inform action across your whole organization.

Meanwhile, as we showed above with our Qriously data, surveying consumers directly via ads on mobile apps can help brands get vital answers to business-critical questions.

Bringing together prompted and unprompted consumer feedback and combining it with your own data sources is the key to becoming Consumer Fit in 2020.