Dive Brief:
- Bank of America credited its focus on customer experience, particularly digital investments, for organic growth in a Q3 2024 earnings call Tuesday.
- The bank added 360,000 net new checking accounts in the quarter, and more than 880,000 net new checking accounts in the first nine months of the calendar year, according to CEO Brian Moynihan.
- “Our organic growth has been driven by a continued focus on customers and client experience throughout all our businesses,” Moynihan said. “For the 23rd consecutive quarter, we added significant net new consumer checking accounts and expanded our customer base and market share.”
Dive Insight:
Bank of America credited its emphasis on client experience for growth and increased digital engagement.
“Our customers and clients continue to want more from us, especially when it comes to our digital capabilities,” Moynihan said. “Our fully integrated consumer banking investment application drives the utility for our customers across [global wealth and investment management] and consumer.”
The bank has 48 million digital active users on the consumer side, a 4% increase from last year, according to the earnings presentation. Users have logged on 3.6 billion times, an 11% increase from last year.
Consumers increasingly access Erica, the bank’s AI-powered virtual assistant, with 20 million active users during the quarter. Since the assistant’s inception, consumers have interacted with Erica 2.4 billion times, according to Moynihan.
Forrester recently rated the bank’s mobile user experience as a leader. The analyst firm highlighted the improved conversational abilities of Erica, and its ability to escalate to a human when need be.
The firm looked at how banks’ conversational assistants served customers. “Can it actually answer your questions in a way that's useful? Can it escalate to a human when necessary? Does it have a good balance of including the relevant content in the interface?” Peter Wannemacher, principal analyst at Forrester, told CX Dive.
Two banks stood out.
“Bank of America and US Bank have done the best job of any bank in North America of improving their conversational capabilities in a way that actually helps people find and complete tasks,” Wannemacher said.
