Customer relationship management in banks: Convenience vs. human touch

Abstract

The banking landscape is changing rapidly with digital platforms becoming a dominant form of interaction between banks and their clients; but isn’t this advancement a big challenge to human touch? Will this advancement render the human element unnecessary? Today, Consumers, particularly millennials, expect banking services to be faster and seamless on the back of smart digital interfaces. Technology has improved productivity. However, it has made the banking operations more mechanical and devoid of human touch. The paper explores the young generation banking customer’s attitude towards Customer Relationship Management strategies adopted by different banks and discovers the alarming signal of vanishing human touch; as the study finds that both banks and customers prefer technological convenience over human touch. Thus, in the evolution of banking, the invisible wall is hindering the relationship between banks and customers which would be showing the impact in the near future. The paper suggests that in the process of aligning the futuristic goals and current practices the major ignorance to human touch is an invisible challenge, which should be addressed at the right time. A service industry like banking cannot breathe without Emotional Connection. In times to come, the fading human touch phenomenon needs to be reserved.