In the realm of loan finance, delivering a seamless end-to-end customer experience is paramount – and harder to achieve than ever. It’s paramount because the simple fact is that a poor experience could ultimately result in lost sales and defaulting customers.
Over three-quarters of borrowers compare interest rates and fees from different lenders before choosing a personal loan. Make a poor impression at even the earliest stages and the consumer is likely to go elsewhere.
It’s also true to say that consumer expectations of the experience are increasing – and delivering on those increasing expectations can deliver a competitive advantage. Bruce Gehrke, senior director of wealth and lending intelligence at J.D. Power notes:
“Today’s personal loan customers are looking for a secure application process, fast approval processes and easy-to-understand applications – those basics are unchanged. The key now is to consistently deliver on those core values in a more streamlined, digital user experience for all customers. Currently, only 56% of customers said their lender delivered on all these basic elements.”
It isn’t just the loan origination process where customer experience matters. Upgrading interactions across the loan lifecycle can deliver valuable benefits. A Forbes Advisor study found that 53% of survey respondents have missed a payment on a personal loan. Four of the top five reasons for defaulting on a payment could be mitigated with a better digital experience. They were: ‘I was traveling;’ ‘I forgot the due date;’ ‘I don’t use the financial institution for my regular banking;’ and ‘It’s too difficult/inconvenient to make the payment.’
Delivering the experience that customers expect, demand, and need in this new landscape depends in large part on the quality and coverage of the software testing regime that loan finance institutions use to test the myriad of devices, systems, and processes they rely on.
But securing a robust, high-quality testing regime can be easier said than done, especially when using manual testing processes. In this blog, we’ll look at the challenges that impact QA teams and consider how Keysight Eggplant helps to mitigate those challenges by automating the software testing process. We’ll also look at its applications in real-world scenarios and offer some best practice tips for getting the most out of what it has to offer.
Find out more about Automated Testing Platform for Financial Services.
The Challenges in Loan Finance Loan finance institutions face unique challenges that add complexity, not least in the context of software testing.
The Challenge of Diverse Customer Touchpoints Loan finance necessitates interactions across various customer touchpoints, from loan application interfaces to payment gateways and customer service portals.
As we’ve seen, across – and when switching between – each of these touchpoints, customers expect a seamless experience.
The Challenge of Regulatory Compliance At the same time as UX is a vital consideration, functional requirements are also non-negotiable. Strict industry regulations necessitate comprehensive testing for any application changes to ensure ongoing compliance.
The risk of breaches in compliance extends beyond fines to considerable reputational damage it can take years to rebuild.
The Challenge of Platform Variability
Platform variability is a significant issue for every software developer because the diverse landscape of mobile phone types and the varying requirements between web and mobile applications introduce complexities into the testing process.
Testing across all of these platforms is complex, time-consuming, and costly. It requires not only physical and virtual devices but also a software platform for managing and interacting with them and their operating systems.
Finding the Solution to the Challenges In these contexts, it is clear that traditional manual software testing is no longer fit for purpose, especially given the trend towards ever-faster release cycles.
However, there is a solution at hand. Keysight Eggplant, a pioneering visual test automation tool, uniquely addresses these challenges while providing significant business value to loan finance institutions.
The Business Value of Eggplant for AI-Driven Model-Based Testing and Visual Excellence To understand the value that Keysight Eggplant brings to loan finance institutions, let’s explore two of its key features.
AI-Driven Model-Based Testing Eggplant uses an AI-driven model-based approach that enables test automation that mirrors real user interactions across diverse customer touchpoints.
Digital twin models are easily built using intuitive drag-and-drop, no-code tools, enabling thousands of test validation scripts to be created automatically.
The model-based testing approach means even non-technical users can generate test cases for any user journey. It also enables coverage of a wide range of user behaviors rather than being limited to testing predetermined happy paths.
The models can be easily adapted as functionality changes in each release, simplifying release readiness planning and increasing confidence in continuous integration and delivery pipelines.
It’s an approach that ensures comprehensive test coverage, uncovers defects earlier in the development cycle, and streamlines test case creation and maintenance.
What’s more, because Eggplant doesn’t need access to the source code or the live environment, it can be used to test even the most critical and sensitive platforms. This opens up the potential to test not only customer-facing sites and mobile apps but also compliance, fraud, trading, and risk workloads.
Visual Testing and Excellence
Eggplant tests using optical character and image recognition, helping to guarantee that applications function as intended while preserving a visually consistent experience. This visual excellence bolsters end-to-end customer satisfaction and upholds brand value.
It’s helped in this by the Sauce Labs Real Device Cloud integration. The integration means institutions no longer have to maintain a centralized test lab, continuously adjust the device mix, manage remote access and user permissions, or keep devices cool and charged.
It allows the automated testing of applications across thousands of devices, browsers, and OS combinations, providing comprehensive coverage and significantly accelerating testing.
Real-World Applications of Eggplant
How do the benefits of Keysight Eggplant play out in the real world, helping loan finance institutions to enhance the end-to-end customer experience? Here are just four examples.
Eggplant helps deliver loan application and approval processes that are smooth, accurate, and error-free by ensuring that loan applicants can navigate application forms and upload required documents seamlessly. The platform meticulously verifies the secure payment gateways the loan finance sector relies on, ensuring that customers can make payments with ease and confidence.
Eggplant can be used to incrementally improve customer service portals, helping to ensure they are efficient, user-friendly, and able to swiftly address customer inquiries and concerns.
Eggplant also allows comprehensive end-to-end journey testing across different devices and platforms. For instance, it can verify that an add-on package purchased through an iOS mobile app is accurately reflected in the customer’s account portal on desktop browsers, in the institution’s internal CRM, and core banking systems. This unified testing approach guarantees a consistent and reliable customer experience across all touchpoints.
Best Practices for Leveraging Eggplant in AI-Driven Model-Based Testing and Visual Excellence
In our work with loan finance institutions, we have the opportunity to support, encourage, and implement best practice usage of Eggplant. We recommend seamlessly incorporating Eggplant into the test automation framework. This accelerates issue identification, improves test coverage, and enhances the end-to-end customer experience.
We encourage customers to leverage Eggplant’s ability to test across a wide range of devices and platforms, ensuring test coverage across all mobile and desktop variations and giving true scalability. Taking scalability to the next level, Eggplant also enables multi-language testing, helping to ensure that applications can seamlessly accommodate multiple languages and that user interfaces and content are correctly displayed and function across diverse linguistic requirements.
Conclusion
In the world of loan finance, delivering an impeccable end-to-end customer experience is not just a goal but an absolute necessity. Eggplant’s capacity to enhance test coverage, streamline testing cycles, and ensure regulatory compliance makes it an essential tool in delivering on this goal. Indeed, unlocking the value of its AI-driven model-based testing and visual excellence equips loan finance institutions to drive business growth and secure a leading position in the market.