Banking-Customer Relationships in the Era of Digitalization: An Internal, Strategic Perspective from Commercial Banks

Purpose: We study the praxis of digitalization and customer relation as subjects in commercial banks in the context of finding an appropriate balance between digital and personal interactions when delivering financial services. The purpose of the study is to investigate how different strategic choices for digital versus non-digital relationships affect and define relations with banking customers from and internal point of view focused on the Personal Advisor's perspective in a B2C context.
Design/methodology/approach: Interviews with employees on strategic, tactical, and operational levels of three commercial banks, are used to demonstrate how different strategies are interpreted and implemented in practice.
Findings: The study confirms the complexity related to strategies for digital versus non-digital relationships in commercial banking and has revealed six major themes for consideration related to how personal advisors perceive the digital strategy in commercial banking; 1) The concept of digitalization as something independent versus integrated, 2) The role of the Personal Advisor, 3) Accessibility and convenience in digital versus non-digital relations, 4)
Digitalization and the complexity of provided service, 5) Customer preferences for personal, human contact and 6) Personal relationships and retention of customers. The strategic choices made in these six areas define the practical interactions with customers.
Originality: We present a novel overview of the implications of strategic choices regarding digitalization in commercial banking, to present a number of recommendations for bankmanagement in the digitalization process.
Research limitations/implications: More empirical investigations are needed to validate the results in a broader perspective, like the customer perspective is lacking and needs to be investigated also.