Today, customer relationship management (CRM) systems are table stakes for banks in their quest to improve financial performance, deepen customer relationships, and increase customer loyalty. Every major bank in the country has invested in a CRM system. A flawless sales and marketing strategy coupled with a top-notch CRM system can lead to financial returns of roughly $5-$8 for every dollar invested. Sounds impressive. But unfortunately, that is not the whole story.
CRM systems have an alarming failure rate. Research from industry analysts indicates that up to 70% of all CRM projects fail. And in an HBR piece, growth strategist Scott Edinger revealed that when he asked executives if their CRM system is helping their business to grow, the failure rate is closer to 90%. Therefore, that high ROI for CRM systems has a significant risk factor associated with it usually not considered in the initial purchase.
Is there a way to increase the value of CRM systems and reduce the risk of failure? Absolutely, by concurrently implementing a digital customer engagement system integrated with the CRM system. This combination is the NEW table stakes in banking.
Digital Customer Engagement Systems Defined
Let’s take a look at how a digital customer engagement system works, and why is it so important. An effective digital customer engagement system is designed to discover customer needs and guide them to appropriate product recommendations and action steps. These systems are used in branches and pure digital channels.
An intelligently designed, calibrated, and implemented digital customer engagement system leads to a much deeper understanding of customer circumstances and needs. Leveraging this real-time, up-to-the-minute information about the customer and their preferences, the customer engagement system can guide customers to perfect-fit product recommendations. On average, the results are a 150% increase in customer product adoption and a 40% increase in customer loyalty. Digital customer engagement systems are super high performers on a stand-alone basis. But integrated with a CRM system, they supercharge bank performance.
CASE STUDIES
Digital Customer Engagement
When banks shine using customer facing digital engagement, they see tremendous growth. Discover what some of the nation’s leading banks are saying about Ignite’s engagement solutions.
When a finely tuned digital customer engagement system is fully integrated with a CRM system, real-time information about customer circumstances, needs, preferences, product recommendations and product selections are all automatically fed to the proper fields of the CRM system. No manual entry by bankers. No mis-keyed information. No outdated information. The overall synergistic benefits of the integrated systems are enormously powerful and fall into four main categories:
Benefits of Integrated Digital Customer Engagement and CRM Systems
More Effective & Productive Bankers
Using digital guided conversations to engage with customers, bankers can focus on the relationship and let the customer engagement system sort through billions of product recommendation option permutations to provide the best product matches for the customer. When the customer engagement and CRM systems are integrated, the banker no longer has to manually enter information about the customer encounter, such as products recommended, products opened, and products to follow up on later. The result is about a 40% sales administration time savings for each customer encounter.
Completing the Sales and Marketing Information Loop
On average, bankers input information gathered from engaging with customers into the CRM system only about 40-70% of the time. This misstep leads to incomplete information about the customer and seriously hinders follow on sales and marketing efforts with the customer, creating a serious sales and marketing information gap. By integrating the customer engagement system with the CRM system, customer information gathered from every customer sales interaction will be 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.
Increased Revenue
The integration of the CRM and customer engagement systems leads to about a 20% increase in sales over and above the 150% increase in revenue from just stand-alone use of the customer engagement system. The revenue increases are a direct result of more effective bankers, more accurate and complete data which enables more successful follow-up sales and marketing efforts.
Happier, More Loyal Customers
Customers want a more humanized customer experience with their bank which shows that the bank is interested in their current circumstances and needs and a desire to help them. Providing bankers with fully integrated customer engagement and CRM systems allows them to fully explore the needs and circumstances of their customers 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%.
Higher Probability of CRM Utilization, Success and ROI
The pairing of customer engagement systems with CRM systems ultimately leads to a better utilized and much more effective CRM system. The key to success is for bankers to actually utilize both the digital customer engagement system and the CRM system as a regular and consistent part of every customer interaction in which 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. Bankers gain an increased level of confidence and realize that usage of the systems is critical to a great customer experience and professional success.
For financial institutions who want to get the most out of their CRM systems and perform at the highest levels, integrating a digital engagement platform is a must. Banks and credit unions leveraging a digital engagement platform maximize their CRM investment and boost their ROI. Learn how you can too.
