Nearly one in four US banks anticipates that developing a competitive mobile and online strategy is set to present one of the greatest challenges over the next two years, a recent report has revealed.

According to the report, only two percent of US banks use text messaging as one of their top vehicles to communicate with customers, even though studies have shown that 53 percent of consumers prefer text notifications over other channels. Additionally, only four percent of financial institutions reported using smartphone applications as a top communications method and only 11 percent use mobile banking.

Furthermore, the report has found that, although banks are aware of the benefits of using an automated system, 45 percent still use agents to manually call customers on their mobile devices.

Moreover, many retail banks still fail to track customer interaction preferences when it comes to determining the best approach to interact with customers. However, 41 percent of companies report that they track customer preference data.

Additionally, the survey has shown that 49 percent of US banks agree that further automating customers communications and giving customers more options to self-serve is both a top customer preference and could drive greater efficiencies in the contact center.

Finally, the report has revealed that banks struggle to distinguish mobile phone numbers, creating a hurdle for the move to texting with 54 percent not knowing how many numbers on their contact list are actually mobile phones. Among those who don't currently contact their consumers via mobile devices, nearly one-third said they did not have access to mobile numbers and more than one in four said the technology systems are not in place to reach mobile customers.

The 2011 Retail Banking Survey has been issued by cross-channel customer interaction management (CIM) company Varolii in collaboration with US Banker, Banking Technology News and Lodestar Research.