New Generation Distribution Channels and Customer Experience Used in Marketing Financial Products and Services in Digital Transformation

Introduction

The banking sector is an important sector for the economies of the country due to its contribution to the increase in investments and economic growth (Yüksel, Dinçer & Emir, 2017). The introduction of banking activities with a history of 4,000 years to the service of customers started to be implemented firstly through branches. At this point, the first distribution channel of the banking sector that still continues is bank branches. Although bank branches are decreasing in many countries of the world, especially in financial centers, the main distribution channel role still maintains today. At this point, branches constitute the starting point of the customer experience. Banks provide not only banking transactions through branches, but also sales and after-sales services of many products such as life insurance, personal insurance. In the past 4,000 years, the banking sector has made critical strategic decisions such as transforming historical information into knowledge, taking the best technology, promoting change in customer channel usage, and managing new risks (Seenivasan, 2020).

Along with the technological developments, the business models and workflow processes of banks have also changed, and over time, ATMs, call centers, internet, and mobile banking have been added to product/service delivery and marketing channels. For many years, while the call center was the problem-solving point, ATM was the deposit (money) -withdrawal point, internet and mobile banking were channels where only monetary transactions are made, today these channels transformed into platforms where communication with customers is the forefront and advanced banking transactions are made and the products are sold. Moreover, these distribution channels started to be managed as separate organizational units in banks, and today they evolved to digital channel management.

One of the sectors where the developments in technology reflect most intensely is the banking sector. At this point, the distribution channels through which banks deliver their products and services to their customers have also changed over time. Although the traditional distribution channels mentioned today are in the first place for many customers in a large part of the world, the use of the artificial intelligence and cloud technology applications that have just been begun to be implemented and which will be accepted as future's traditional distribution channels is also becoming widespread (Jewendah, 2018). With the development of artificial intelligence, the banking sector has started to make extensive use of this technology in distribution channels in order to save time and cost. (Kaur, Sahdev, Sharma & Siddiqui, 2020). At this point, blockchain-based bitcoin, crypto money, mobile payment, and smart wallet applications continue to develop as a separate channel structure. Also, chatbots and robo-advisors are on the way to becoming the new generation channels. These applications provide services especially in subjects such as personalized product and service provision, financial consultancy and investment consultancy. Moreover, the intertwining of the world we live in with social media has also attracted the attention of banks, and over time, they have taken advantage of social media as a distribution channel and started product and service delivery and marketing activities. At this point, it is important for banks to work with coordinates with other channels on the platforms mentioned.

Strategies created for the management of business processes contribute to the review of the business processes of owners and employees as well as other stakeholders. Strategies for the management of business processes have also changed over time for banks (Baiyere, Salmela & Tapanainen, 2020). In fact, the level of use of technology is a management strategy for banks. So, technology plays an important role in the transformation and change process of banks. Intensive application of information technologies strategy in banks increases customer value and contributes to positive customer experience (Malar, Arvidsson & Holmstrom, 2019). In this section, as the technology is accepted as an important management strategy by the banks in the digital transformation process, the present situation and future of new distribution channels added to traditional banking distribution channels are tried to be revealed in terms of customer experience. At this point, the research question of the study is with which tools and to what extent banks integrate technology into their distribution channels as a strategy tool.