This is part two in a series on Connected Experiences for Banks and Credit Unions. Be sure to check out part one.
A CRM system accomplishes the ultimate goal of better understanding, engaging, and retaining current and prospective customers, as well as current and prospective team members.
To get buy-in from all levels, it’s best to build out high-level organization goals and objectives — and a roadmap that details why and how a CRM would benefit the company as a whole.
Strategic information gathering
That means you’ll be spending time with all of your internal groups to document their current state and their ideal one. This is more than a team hierarchy chart, a systems list, or reports. This is listening to your subject matter experts (SMEs) about their processes, tools that complement or add friction to those processes, and metrics. You need to understand how each person, team, and process is impacting the business.
These impacts could be financial or cultural. While you are conducting this discovery it is critical to define your strategy. Why are you asking these questions?. The groups you are engaging with need to understand the impact it will have on their roles and their clients. Setting the “why” ahead of time goes a long way to getting the information you need. You also need to build trust with your business partner (consultant or internal team) by demonstrating you understand how each group contributes to the ideal customer experience.
Let business objectives guide your success formula
Once you know for certain that Salesforce is right for you, your team, and your business — you need to convince everyone else.
Especially leadership and executive teams.
That’s where your conversations with SMEs come into play. Once you’ve spoken with your SMEs, every good business decision comes backed with proper use cases for how it will result in improvements for company assets, also known as — you guessed it — people, processes, and technology. Addressing these three pillars from both an internal and external viewpoint almost guarantees buy-in from decision makers and key stakeholders. And change management becomes infinitely easier when the “why” is communicated strongly before implementing anything new.
What are some common objectives to look for and tailor to your company’s current state and needs? We thought you’d never ask.
Objective: Defining and tracking KPIs
Identify what you know and what you want to know as it relates to processes, procedures, and protocols. Defining program and product success for your business by asking yourself and your SMEs the following:
How do we define “quality relationships” and what do we use to measure their success?
How do we show collaboration, adoption, or process improvement?
Which activities should we automate based on process flows?
Do we track and monitor requests, such as marketing queries, to better understand what branches need, and how best to facilitate proper collateral?
How can we drive a retention program to increase loyalty?
How can we remove friction while onboarding clients we just acquired through a merger or acquisition?
All of this and more can be accomplished with a CRM customized to your branch’s unique needs and specifications.
Objective: Cutting costs
Always a crowd pleaser, saving money is the way to any savvy businessperson’s heart. Salesforce can help you:
Streamline processes
Kill your spreadsheets — automating manual tasks means less time spent on administrative duties and more time spent on customer-centric work
Eliminate point solutions by leveraging the platform to support processes and workflows (referral management, pipeline management, case management, complaints management, contract management, digital marketing, print marketing, and event management, to name a few)
Optimize your workforce by removing the need for third-party agencies (marketing agencies, for example)
Execute more programs with less staff
Objective: Improving efficiency ratios
The only thing better than saving money, is saving time. Does your organization drive new business with a team or tech stack that’s as lean as possible? How will a CRM improve your efficiency ratio?
Get quality relationships with the support of
Online appointment scheduling
Digital engagement tools (cross-channel capabilities)
Online Account Opening
Grow accounts by optimizing:
Client 360. Consolidate all the possible ways your customers and members have to manage their relationship with you. For example, don’t force a login for all of your point solutions. Find a way to make it easy for users to authenticate seamlessly and expand their relationship with you.
Marketing campaigns. Track and manage your client and prospect campaigns.
How are they performing overall?
Which channels are your best performers?
What segments are the most engaged and where?
Are you communicating to all clients the same way?
How are you delivering personalization?
How does your front-line staff interact with planned campaigns?
How are they informing new campaigns?
Client interaction. Eliminate friction in online channel interactions for faster, easier use in day-to-day transactions or asset management. Consolidate your view of customer for staff to drive more satisfactory, fully integrated experiences
AI integration. Marketing automation provides insights to help drive growth with solutions like Next Best Action. Einstein Analytics enables chatbots for online customer queries
Objective: Clear communication
When people can easily understand the processes required for using tools, less mistakes are made — and tasks become less time consuming.
Salesforce clears things up, letting your teams:
Intelligently route communications to the appropriate areas
Adhere to standards across all account types and requests
Phase out rules or exceptions for legacy account types or specific associates
Eliminate friction for internal team and customers
Objective: Retention and relationship deepening
Customers and members look to branch and contact center employees to be experts. How can you empower your team to provide superior quality service that ensures quality accounts not only stay, but grow? With Salesforce, you can:
Provide workshops
Take the time to train your team on new technology, tools, and solutions so they can spend more time solving customer problems than searching for functionalities. By focusing on the process as much as what new buttons to click, so that when it comes time for client interaction the team is ready to multitask
Improve onboarding
Your customers want to know that you can help them every step of the way. An easy way to align customers and team member experience is to encourage employees to open an account themselves. You can craft and track an employee onboarding campaign designed to get more employees to bank where they work. When the service you provide is the service you would receive, engagement and pride in work increases
Build a rapport
Automate follow-ups and assessments after an interaction or specific period of time has passed between contact with a customer or prospect. Make sure they know that they are a priority to your business.
Track and improve customer satisfaction scores: What are you measuring and how often? What are the action plans after you collect the data?
Establish customer profiles, surface relevant data to the front-lines, and coach staff on the proper conversations
Once you understand how each person, team, and process impacts the business, you can shift your focus to your customer needs. With a united team of SMEs and executives on board — it’s time to think about growing your customer base.
Objective: Cutting costs
