Another industrial revolution has catapulted society into a new age, and the possibilities seem endless. The tides of digital transformation have hit our shores, and there is no turning back. Digital disruption is fast changing traditional customer onboarding.

Customer onboarding can be summed up as all the activities involved in introducing a new customer to your company, product or service.

Customers can no longer be expected to go to a branch to acquire your services or be stuck to one channel to complete an application process, let alone be sent back and forth to update the same information. Instead, customers expect a fast, simple, multi-channel and secure way to access your offerings. Now more than ever, the age-old saying is true that “the customer is king”. In today’s highly competitive markets, those companies that do not transform to digital onboarding run the risk of becoming uncompetitive.

The need to establish a digital onboarding solution is paramount. Companies must offer online or remote onboarding where the process is entirely digital, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to go into a store to complete the process. Successful digital onboarding includes:

Data collection using a customer-centric user interface guiding them through their onboarding journey and providing real-time feedback.
Biometrics such as fingerprints or facial scans used to confirm the identity of the person being onboarded.
OCR technologies extracting minimum information from documents or digital IDs, in turn reducing manual input from the customer.
Real-time identity checks (eKYC) against digital databases such as citizen databases, credit bureaus and sanctions-screening to ensure the customer being onboarded is genuine.
Document uploading capabilities to add supporting documents while providing real-time feedback of image quality and background.
Digital signature facilitation to sign and approve the application electronically without exiting the onboarding process.

Banks like Capitec have understood customers’ needs, enabling remote account opening from the comfort of their customer’s home. Remote onboarding extends to customers (individual and companies), suppliers and employees. The benefits of digital onboarding include improving the customer experience, increasing customer conversion, reducing fraud, and reducing the cost of onboarding and compliance.

Technology advances have made it easier for companies to move beyond their current constraints and leverage this digital disruption. Technologies such as mobile capture, fingerprint scanning, facial recognition software, identity verification and API technology are changing the game. Remote onboarding solutions have become significantly cheaper, making the digitisation transformation business case a no-brainer. Digitising the customer onboarding experience is a simple, immediate step that institutions can take to fast-track their digital transformation journeys.

The simple truth is that the days of traditional onboarding are fast coming to an end. There is no better time to add end-to-end digital onboarding to your customer engagement channels.

Sybrin provides easy, quick-to-deploy onboarding solutions. Get yours now
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About Sybrin
Sybrin was established in 1991 and has three decades of experience in the provision of bespoke solutions in the payment and information management industries. We have sold more than 600 systems across Africa, Europe and the Middle East, with over 250 employees who are dedicated, resourceful and passionate about their work. Our solutions are deployed in 20 countries worldwide and we are actively expanding into new territories, experiencing a consistent growth rates of over 30%/year. Our rapid growth enables us to best serve our growing customer base in and around Africa. For more, visit www.sybrin.com.