Western Union is mapping customer journeys to reduce abandoned transactions

As digital money transfer companies like TransferWise and Remitly encroach on Western Union ’s business, the 168-year-old company is tracking online customer journeys to figure out why some of them abandon transactions. This week, Western Union began working with Israeli customer data analytics company Nice in an effort to pinpoint specifically where customers abandon transactions and what causes them to call customer service. Insights acquired from this effort will be used to evolve product design. “Let’s find the root cause [of transaction abandonment], get in front of it and eliminate it,” said Bryan Haas, head of customer experience strategy at Western Union. “Do these customers come back and send again with us at a higher, lower or the same rate as the overall population?” Nice creates a step-by-step breakdown of Western Union customers' trajectories as they navigate the process of sending money online. By comparing customer transaction patterns with data from customer satisfaction surveys, Western Union is able to identify components of the customer journey that are sources of frustration. The effort to address customer experience is one part of its digital transformation strategy. Stanley Yung, chief customer officer at Western Union, said the company has spent the past seven years building its digital remittance operation. In June, the company turned to Visa Direct to improve the efficiency of cross-border payments. According to Yung, online remittances are 14% of the company’s consumer-to-consumer business, but the platform still has challenges. See also: Western Union taps Visa Direct to boost cross-border transfers Western Union has been working with Nice over the past "few months," looking at data from online transactions, call center interactions and customer surveys. Ashna Shah, senior director of strategy at AI-based marketing platform Albert , said identifying where customers are dropping off is key for the customer experience strategy of any brand, financial or otherwise. "We're constantly looking for where the leaky holes are," she said. "The 360-degree view of a journey is helpful. It's the pot of gold that we sit on." An Aite Group study launched this week estimated that cross-border remittance transactions were worth $689 billion in 2018. The top six money-transfer organizations accounted for almost one-third of that total, and Western Union still processes the highest number of those (287 million) by far. Western Union, however, has more than 550,000 physical locations around the world, which account for the bulk of its transactions. In second place was TransferWise with 140 million transactions. Study author Talie Baker told Bank Innovation that identifying pain points was a good move for Western Union, but newer companies are still threats to its business model. "I am hearing that customers don’t have a lot of loyalty to any one company and that they shop around for prices and use multiple services for remittances," she said. "Western Union's future will be based in part on whether or not Remitly, WorldRemit and other startups are able to become profitable. If they do, they will continue to eat away at Western Union's market share."

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Western Union is mapping customer journeys to reduce abandoned transactions

TIAA rolls out digital safety deposit box to grow customer relationships

Starling adds peer-to-peer lender Growth Street to its marketplace

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