April 2024 Indian Banking App Insights Session

Executive Summary:

Touchpoint Group leverages its Ipiphany platform to analyse customer reviews from the App Store and Google Play. These reviews provide information about user experiences, perceptions, and sentiment of various banking apps. By capturing and analysing this data Touchpoint Group can uncover valuable insights into the performance of these apps.

Axis Bank has led the pack over the past 12 to 15 months. Their Engaged Customer Score has remained at the top, with no other prominent bank surpassing them in this period. This consistent performance highlights their strong user engagement and satisfaction.

Key Findings on Banking Apps

• HDFC Bank: HDFC Bank's app has experienced significant fluctuations. After a low starting point in February 2023 it saw a sharp decline in September but recovered by October. However, March 2024 marked another downturn which continued into April. Issues such as mobile number verification and net banking outages contributed to
  this decline, affecting user experience.
• ICICI Bank: ICICI Bank's app maintained an average performance until the end of last year. However, from January onwards, it has been on a downward trajectory, hitting its lowest point in March and April 2024. Authentication and reliability issues have been major pain points exacerbated by incidents like the misallocation of new credit cards to incorrect users.
• Kotak Bank: Kotak Bank's app has seen the most fluctuation among the banks analysed. After a steady decline from April to August 2023 it showed some recovery, but then declined again from December onwards. Recent issues with their ID system and server outages have negatively impacted user experience.

Exploring Customer Issues: HDFC’s Rollercoaster Performance

HDFC Bank's app has experienced significant fluctuations. After a low starting point in February 2023, it saw a sharp decline in September but recovered by October. However, March 2024 marked another downturn, which continued into April. Several issues have contributed to this decline, affecting user experience significantly.

Mobile Number Verification Challenges
One of the major issues faced by HDFC Bank users is the mobile number verification process. This verification ensures that the SIM card of the customer’s bank-registered number is in the device used to access the account. Customers have reported numerous difficulties with this process, particularly when their mobile number is unable to be verified.

This issue has been prominent among NRI and NRE customers, who have expressed significant dissatisfaction. Users suggested that HDFC should test the verification process thoroughly with their own accounts before rolling it out to the public.

Net Banking Outages
In addition to verification problems HDFC experienced a net banking outage in the second half of April. During this period, users were directed to alternative channels, including mobile banking, which led to increased load and subsequent issues with the mobile app. This outage affected user experience and contributed to the app's declining performance.

The Importance of Benchmarking

4 Foundational Pillars

Touchpoint Group has identified 4 main pillars crucial for a successful banking app: Authentication, Design and UI, Reliability, and Features and Functionality. Each pillar encompasses various subtopics that are essential for a good user experience.

Benchmarking Kotak Bank Vs Axis Bank

By comparing Kotak Bank's app to the market leader, Axis Bank, significant differences were noted. Kotak users reported higher issues related to reliability, stability, and authentication. For instance, 48% of Kotak users faced reliability issues compared to 20% of Axis users. Authentication issues were 4 times higher for Kotak users.

Identifying Pain Points

The analysis revealed specific pain points for Kotak Bank, such as app updates and technical issues. Kotak users were also more likely to express dissatisfaction and consider switching banks, highlighting the risk of customer churn.

Multi-Language Analysis Capability

Overcoming Translation Challenges

Touchpoint Group has integrated a solution with Google to translate over 100 languages into English, enabling the analysis of customer feedback from diverse linguistic backgrounds. This capability is crucial for a market like India where multiple languages are spoken.

​

Video Transcript

00:05 - Glenn: Hello everybody, my name is Glenn Marvin and joining me as usual today is the Touchpoint Group Global Head of AI Analytics and CX Strategy, Yazad Karkaria, and in this Insights Session we'll be taking another look at the Indian Banking App Market. Now, Yazad, I believe there's been a lot going on with some of the prominent banks in the last month. The key topics that we'll be covering in this session will be revolutionising insights discovery, so, uncovering insights like you never have before and the importance of benchmarking using Ipiphany.

00:41 - Yazad: Thanks Glenn. Yes, many banks have been in the news for numerous reasons recently and let's start off by taking a look at the performance of the banks. Right now what I have on my screen is the performance of different banking apps based on the online reviews that customers have posted. Anyone who's posting a review on App Store or Google Play and has given a comment explaining why they have rated a bank in a certain way, we are capturing that data and analysing that in detail over here. Now, let's start looking at Axis Bank.

Axis Bank, as we can see, over the last 12 to 15 months has been performing quite consistently and has been the leader throughout. None of the other prominent banks have surpassed the Engaged Customer Score of Axis Bank in the time period that we are currently looking at. So, they are going quite strong.

The next one we have is HDFC. HDFC is an interesting one. They started off in a much lower range back in February 2023 and they had a huge setback in September last year. However, they recovered quite sharply and performance was quite consistent from October last year till February 2024. But in March it dropped sharply and in April, user experience continued to remain at a lower level.

Now, in the last couple of months, HDFC has been in the news regarding the mobile number verification that's happening. Mobile number verification ensures that the SIM card of customers bank registered number is in the device from which they want to access the account, and also in second half of April, there was an instance where net banking was down for HDFC users and users were directed to other alternate channels which included mobile banking as well.

The next bank that we have over here is ICICI Bank. So, with ICICI Bank as we can see, their performance was average and though there have been some fluctuations, it was quite consistent till the end of last year. But they have been slipping away since January and in the month of March and April. In fact, they have reached the lowest point in the entire time period that we have over here on the screen.

In March and April, in fact, the number of Authentication and Reliability related issues that ICICI app users have faced has been the highest, and to add to that brief, also what happened with ICICI is they were in the news in the second half of April as about 17,000 new credit cards got mapped to incorrect users and several ICICI Bank customers were now able to see details of other users while using their mobile banking app. The last one over here that we have on the screen is Kotak Bank.

Kotak Bank, as you can see, their performance, their performance has been fluctuating quite a bit. They consistently dropped from April 23 to August 23. Then they had a recovery period and then after November, again they started declining since December. So, their performance has had maximum fluctuation compared to other players, and also recently they were in the news as RBI cracked whip on them due to serious deficiencies in their ID system. Also, mid April, bank's technical servers were down, impacting mobile banking app users, and some angry users also took to social media to report the same.

This was just looking at the user experience at a high level based on the Engaged Customer Score that users of these mobile banking apps have given. But what we'll now do is we will try and pick one of these recent issues or recent cases because of which these banks were in the news.

Let's look at the mobile number verification experience of HDFC users and let's try and explore a very unique AI technology driven analytics, which goes beyond the traditional ways to uncover customer experiences holistically in this space.

I'll take a moment to explain what I have on my screen. Here we can see different topics regarding which customers are giving us feedback, and we are not looking at these topics in isolation, we are looking at how the different topics are being spoken about together. That is the relationship between different topics over here and the way customers talk about them.

Here we can see that customers are talking about difficulty in being able to log in, which is linked to a number of different issues around over here. But it's also linked to this topic here, Poor app Login Feature and Mobile App Update. Now, what we want to try and understand is what is it that's going on with the mobile number verification.

If I click on this particular topic over here to understand the key themes which come up over here straight away, direct me to Mobile Number. Here I can see that some customers are talking about their verification process here. If the mobile number is unable to be verified, what will the customer do? HDFC should first do the testing with their own account and then only should be ready for users.

Also, we are seeing quite a few NRI and NRE customers complaining about this. It looks like this issue is also quite prominent amongst NRI and NRE customers. So, what I can do is very quickly, I can just search for this topic and yes, quite a few NRI and NRE customers have expressed their dissatisfaction with regards to what's happening in this space of registering their mobile numbers.

This is one of the key things that we've uncovered using our AI powered analytics framework, which is quite unique in terms of bringing out insights which are otherwise difficult to bring out, and the idea over here is focusing on this entire piece of insights holistically, rather than looking at topics here in isolation because in order to plan any necessary actions or take the next steps product teams and insights teams need to have a holistic understanding of different topics or issues that customers are talking about together.

00:06:29 - Glenn: Thanks for that Yazad. And how about benchmarking? Can you provide us with an example where benchmarking is helpful for our clients that use the platform?

00:06:37 - Yazad: Sure. Definitely, Glenn. What I'll do is I'll just quickly first share the framework that we are going to be using to analyse the app reviews data. Here on my screen, we have the Four Foundational Pillars. Based on our experience in this field, analysing over a million customer comments across more than 100 banks, we've identified four main pillars on which any banking app needs to perform well for the customers to have a good user experience, and these pillars are Authentication, Design and UI, Reliability of the app and Features and Functionality.

Having said that, within each of these pillars, we have a lot of additional subtopics and details which our clients can then use to analyse their performance and even benchmark with others. What we may do for today's session, Glenn, is that we will take the example of Kotak Bank and benchmark Kotak since they've not been performing well over a period of time, we will benchmark them to Axis Bank and take a look at what our analysis tells us.

Here we are comparing Axis Bank to Kotak on the our foundational pillars that we just discussed. The numbers that you see over here are indicating pain points. For example, for Axis Bank in the period of first Jan to 30th April 2024, we are looking at the period of January 24 here for this analysis. We can see that for Axis Bank, about 20% users have had issues related to Reliability and Stability while giving feedback, whereas when we compare it to Kotak, it's more than twice, about 48%. Kotak users have experienced Reliability and Stability related issues in the past. Similarly with Authentication, which is a really key foundational pillar because it all starts with Authentication. If you're not able to get into your app, then there's nothing that you can do with the app. This is a key driver of dissatisfaction in case the banking app fails to perform on this and when you compare the performance over here, Kotak users are around four times more likely to face Authentication related issues compared to Axis Bank. Interestingly, there are not much differences on Features and Functionality and Design and UI.

So, Glenn, if Kotak bank is looking at this, the key thing for them to focus is on making sure that the app is functioning in a smooth way and customers are able to transact easily and looking at their authentication process in terms of Features and Functionality and Design and UI, there are not much differences with the market leader, but these are the two main areas that they need to focus on and look at in detail. Now, as I was mentioning earlier, we can also look at the subtopics within these to see where the key differences lie. Here we can see Technical Issues. App Update related feedback.

So in the case of Axis, only about 3% customers have voice concerns about the app being updated and then subsequently having a negative experience. Whereas in the case of Kotak, again, it's about four times as much as we can see with the market leader over here. Another key one over here is Threatening Churn.

Kotak users are three times more likely to indicate that they are going to be leaving the bank or they will stop using the mobile banking app and move in favour of another bank. Here we can just see some examples coming up. 'From five days I'm trying to open the app' 'Such poor service' 'I'm thinking of changing the bank'. 'Very bad service. Now I'm thinking of closing my account'. Here you can see a number of customers who have expressed their dissatisfaction with their mobile banking experience with Kotak and these are strong signs of customer attrition. We help our clients to monitor and minimise these by identifying the key drivers of customer attrition. But yes, this is how benchmarking can help a certain bank to identify what are the key areas they need to focus on to close the gap with the market leaders and improve the user experience of their banking app.

00:10:23 - Glenn: Yeah, one thing I just noticed there, Yazad, was all of those comments were in English. So, does Touchpoint Group have the ability to do multi language analysis?

00:10:34 - Yazad: Absolutely. We have an integrated solution with Google where we are able to translate over 100 languages, 100 global languages into English, and then analyse this data. Also, one of the unique features is that you can also look at the translated version of the comment and the english version of the comment on your screen to see how the translation has worked. But yes, having this ability to translate different languages, especially in a market like India, puts us in a very strong position, as translation has always been a pain point and it tends to slow things down in the analytics process.sis?

00:11:12 - Glenn: Fantastic, and how do we work with clients?

00:11:15 - Yazad: Yeah. Right now, Glenn, we've looked at these results retrospectively, but with our banking clients they have access to this information real time. And with our consulting support, the insights teams and product teams can stay on top of any budding issues, or we support them with the launch of new versions and competitive benchmarking, etc and the best thing is that this is a turnkey solution. We manage the data insights generation and reporting for our clients, who can then focus on driving the findings internally at a strategic and a tactical level, rather than themselves getting into the data, trying to prepare reports and spending time doing more operational activities.

00:11:52 - Glenn: That's fantastic. Thank you so much again for such a wonderful Insights Session and if you would like us to have a look at your banking app, feel free to reach out and we can organise a one-on-one session with you and maybe even benchmark yours against some of the market leaders. Thanks again, folks.

# Executive Summary: Insights into the Indian Banking App Market

In the latest Insights Session, Glenn Marvin and Yazad Karkaria from Touchpoint Group discuss the performance of banking apps in the Indian market. This session highlights how customer feedback is influencing the strategies of prominent banks, emphasising the importance of benchmarking using the Ipiphany platform. Here’s a detailed look at the key findings and insights.

## Revolutionising Insights Discovery

### Capturing Customer Sentiment

Touchpoint Group has been analysing customer reviews from the App Store and Google Play. These reviews provide information about user experiences and perceptions of various banking apps. By capturing and analysing this data, they can uncover valuable insights into the performance of these apps.

### The Leading Performer: Axis Bank

Axis Bank has led the pack over the past 12 to 15 months. Their Engaged Customer Score has remained at the top, with no other prominent bank surpassing them in this period. This consistent performance highlights their strong user engagement and satisfaction.

## Key Findings on Banking Apps

### HDFC Bank: A Rollercoaster Performance

HDFC Bank's app has experienced significant fluctuations. After a low starting point in February 2023, it saw a sharp decline in September but recovered by October. However, March 2024 marked another downturn, which continued into April. Several issues have contributed to this decline, affecting user experience significantly.

#### Mobile Number Verification Challenges

One of the major issues faced by HDFC Bank users is the mobile number verification process. This verification ensures that the SIM card of the customer’s bank-registered number is in the device used to access the account. Customers have reported numerous difficulties with this process, particularly when their mobile number is unable to be verified. This issue has been prominent among NRI and NRE customers, who have expressed significant dissatisfaction. Users suggested that HDFC should test the verification process thoroughly with their own accounts before rolling it out to the public.

#### Net Banking Outages

In addition to verification problems, HDFC experienced a net banking outage in the second half of April. During this period, users were directed to alternative channels, including mobile banking, which led to increased load and subsequent issues with the mobile app. This outage affected user experience and contributed to the app's declining performance.

### ICICI Bank: Slipping Performance

ICICI Bank's app maintained an average performance until the end of last year. However, from January onwards, it has been on a downward trajectory, hitting its lowest point in March and April 2024. Authentication and reliability issues have been major pain points, exacerbated by incidents like the misallocation of new credit cards to incorrect users.

### Kotak Bank: Fluctuating User Experience

Kotak Bank's app has seen the most fluctuation among the banks analysed. After a steady decline from April to August 2023, it showed some recovery but then declined again from December onwards. Recent issues with their ID system and server outages have negatively impacted user experience.

## Exploring Customer Issues: A Case Study on HDFC

### Mobile Number Verification

The session delved into the mobile number verification issues faced by HDFC users. Customers have reported difficulties logging in due to verification failures, with notable dissatisfaction among NRI and NRE customers. This highlights the importance of thorough testing before rolling out such features to ensure a smooth user experience.

### Holistic Analysis

Using AI-powered analytics, Touchpoint Group goes beyond traditional methods to provide a holistic understanding of customer issues. By analysing related topics together, they can identify key themes and interconnections, offering deeper insights into user experiences.

## The Importance of Benchmarking

### Four Foundational Pillars

Touchpoint Group has identified four main pillars crucial for a successful banking app: Authentication, Design and UI, Reliability, and Features and Functionality. Each pillar encompasses various subtopics that are essential for a good user experience.

### Benchmarking Kotak Bank Against Axis Bank

By comparing Kotak Bank's app to the market leader, Axis Bank, significant differences were noted. Kotak users reported higher issues related to reliability, stability, and authentication. For instance, 48% of Kotak users faced reliability issues compared to 20% of Axis users. Authentication issues were four times higher for Kotak users.

### Identifying Pain Points

The analysis revealed specific pain points for Kotak Bank, such as app updates and technical issues. Kotak users were also more likely to express dissatisfaction and consider switching banks, highlighting the risk of customer churn.

## Multi-Language Analysis Capability

### Overcoming Translation Challenges

Touchpoint Group has integrated a solution with Google to translate over 100 languages into English, enabling the analysis of customer feedback from diverse linguistic backgrounds. This capability is crucial for a market like India, where multiple languages are spoken.

## Working with Clients

### Real-Time Insights and Consulting Support

Touchpoint Group provides real-time access to insights for their banking clients. They support insights and product teams in staying on top of emerging issues, launching new versions, and conducting competitive benchmarking. This turnkey solution allows clients to focus on strategic and tactical actions rather than operational tasks.

### Conclusion

The session emphasised the value of using AI-powered analytics and benchmarking to enhance the user experience of banking apps. By understanding and addressing customer issues holistically, banks can improve their app performance and maintain customer satisfaction. If you’re interested in analysing your banking app, reach out to Touchpoint Group for a personalised session and benchmarking against market leaders.