You’ve invested in a CRM system, that’s a great start. You invested significant budget and time to get it up and running as well. Now, how do you make that investment pay off? Many FI’s are asking that same question.
The banking industry, like many others in which customer relationships are key to growth, has adopted CRM software as an essential business solution. Yet, despite having invested significant budgets into their CRM systems, many banks and credit unions find their CRM investments aren’t quite living up to expectations.
What’s the missing element? Getting the right information into their CRMs in the first place. If banking representatives aren’t consistently updating the CRM after every conversation, then the information used for marketing, sales and reporting are inaccurate and missing the mark or in many cases not being adopted by personnel as expected. There is a solution to this common problem. And it doesn’t require starting over.
Adding a digital customer engagement service to the front end can ensure that every interaction with the customer adds important details to the CRM automatically. Adding guided conversations in front of your CRM, you organically collect real-time information about customer circumstances, needs, preferences, product recommendations, and product selections to update the relevant fields of the CRM system with a click. That means no manual entry or mistyped data or missed information by bankers.
Integrating a customer engagement service with your CRM adds value to the investment you already made as well as many other benefits.
Here are the top five:
1. More effective bankers
Using digital guided conversations to engage with customers, bankers can focus on the relationship and let the customer engagement system sort through thousands of product recommendation options to provide the best product matches for the customer. When the customer engagement system is integrated with the CRM system, the banker no longer needs to manually enter information about the customer encounter, such as products recommended, products opened, and follow-ups needed. The result is about 40% savings in sales administration time for each customer encounter.
For example, one global bank introduced guided conversations as part of a pilot program and saw a jump in efficiency and confidence in their team, which equated to a time savings of more than 40 minutes per banker per customer engagement. Because of the deeper, richer engagement with customers, the bank also saw improvements of about 30% in customer satisfaction scores for every customer that experienced a guided conversation.
2. Continually updated CRM
By integrating the customer engagement system with the CRM system, information gathered from every customer sales interaction is automatically entered into the CRM system. In essence, this completes the sales and marketing information loop by providing accurate information to be used in ongoing sales and marketing efforts.
A guided digital conversation can also help improve the number of qualified leads delivered from a bank’s website. One northeast super-regional bank saw a 62% increase in customers opening accounts after adding an Ignite digital customer engagement guide to their website. The responsive online tool allows customers to engage in a guided conversation from any digital device, including smartphones, tablets, and personal computers.
Furthermore, the insights the bank gathers from digital conversations prove invaluable in their potential to refine customer segmentation and products, enhance the customer experience, and project future revenue opportunities.
3. Increased revenue
It’s not surprising that an increase in revenue follows from implementing a customer engagement system that delivers more efficient bankers, more accurate and complete data about leads, and more effective marketing efforts and follow-up sales. But integrating it with a CRM adds even more value. Combining a customer engagement tool with a CRM leads to – on average – a 20% increase in sales over and above the 150% increase in revenue coming from the stand-alone use of a customer engagement system. That’s a huge win for adding ROI to your CRM investment.
One reason this combination leads to more revenue is the lift in success with up-selling and cross-selling. For example, Central Bank of the Ozarks, a community bank in Missouri, found that customers were adopting, on average, five products from every guided conversation. “There is a mix of revenue-generating products and add-ons in that five. And we have an increase in revenue-generating products that is about 148% higher than the industry average of about 1.3,” said Roselyn Baldner, President, COO, Central Bank of the Ozarks.
4. Happier, more loyal customers
Customers want a more humanized engagement with the bank, and one that shows that the bank is interested in understanding their circumstances and wants to help them. A fully integrated customer engagement and CRM system allows bankers to gain more insight into the customer’s needs and deepen the relationship. Research shows us that when customers feel that bankers listen to them and work to help them, it increases customer loyalty by about 40%.
As the 2021 Digital Banking Report stated, “When you improve the experience from your customers’ perspective, there is proof that your organization will improve satisfaction, increase sales, expand depth of relationships, increase retention, and positively impact your institution’s bottom line.” For customers, a positive digital experience can be the determining factor.
Customer satisfaction with their banking experience can translate into higher overall ratings for the bank. Soon after implementing a customer engagement system, Rockland Trust, a Massachusetts-based bank, was awarded the highest ranking in J.D. Power U.S. Retail Banking Satisfaction Study among New England banks.
5. Higher probability of CRM success
The pairing of customer engagement systems with CRM systems ultimately leads to a better utilized and more effective CRM system. The key to success, of course, is to use both systems as a consistent part of every customer interaction – putting it at the center when a customer or prospect is interested in improving their financial wellness and exploring product options.
The great news is that success breeds system adoption and usage. By embedding the access and initialization of the customer engagement system within the CRM system, the customer experience with the banker becomes seamless and natural. This gives bankers an increased level of confidence that usage of both systems is critical to a great customer experience and their professional success.
Get More Value from Your Investment
Using a guided conversation service helps banks increase leads from digital channels, improve customer satisfaction, increase business performance, and better meet the needs of consumers and small businesses.
When a digital customer engagement service is seamlessly integrated with a CRM, it radically improves the sales process, closes the information gap, and provides the ultimate frictionless experience that aligns sales goals, tasks, and metrics. It helps bankers be more proficient and effective when talking with customers, which improves the overall outcomes with a click.
Combining a CRM with Customer Engagement Services results in a 150% increase in customer product adoption and a 40% increase in customer loyalty.
Find out more
Download our free guide “Turbocharge Your Bank’s CRM Performance.”
Ignite Sales is the leader in digital customer engagement, using artificial intelligence for engaging analytics to facilitate growth, deeper product penetration and increase satisfaction levels of bankers and customers.
