I hear from clients all the time that their focus is growing their business, but when I ask how, they often say, “Acquiring new customers.”

Acquisition can absolutely grow your business, no doubt about it. But if you’re not paying attention to those customers after they open an account, then you’re just refilling a leaky bucket. 

Mining your existing customers can move the needle just as much, if not more, than acquiring more customers. And it takes much less effort — in fact, if you’re using Salesforce, you already have all of the tools you need to build a robust retention program that can grow deposits.

Quality > quantity

Instead of focusing on more accounts, think about quality. 

One of our longtime banking clients did an analysis of their customers recently that showed them the power of retention. They currently have 2,403 internet banking clients, and the average relationship with them lasts 3.9 years. Of those 2,403 accounts, 1,077 lasted more than three years. 

What makes those 1,077 excited to stay in business with them? That’s exactly what they turned to Silverline for help with. Together we looked at their existing Salesforce data and found that 52% of internet banking clients had no activity recorded in Salesforce from an associate. 

Silverline dug deeper, looking at the Salesforce accounts that had at least one sales or customer service interaction. Clients with activity showed 21% more account penetration on checking accounts and 9% higher penetration for mortgages. (And those clients had overall higher balances, to boot.)

To do the same kind of analysis with your customers to find opportunities for cross-sell, upsell, and retention, look at:

• Length of relationship with bank
• Number of interactions with your team
• NPS and customer satisfaction scores
• Priority page views and where customers browse on your website for information
• Savings and checking balance growth
• Held-Away accounts

Once Silverline identified key data points for their team to optimize against, it was time to revamp their existing welcome program to encourage more sales and support interaction.

Rolling out the welcome mat increases retention

Establish a multi-channel onboarding flow that starts your relationship off on the right foot. 

Your onboarding flow is the first point in the customer journey for new customers. It’s where they can feel confident they’ve made the right choice and that you care about their business. Treat them differently based on what you know about them — if someone comes in through a digital channel, they shouldn’t receive the same onboarding as someone who walked into a branch.  

Focus more on personalization to drive higher satisfaction and higher share of wallet. That’s what’s going to make them feel more welcome. That means:

• Booking them with the branch that’s actually closest to them, rather than a standard for digital users
• Assigning a specific team member to manage that account and check in with that person, even if it’s just via email or chat
• Proactively engaging digitally and physically with all of your organization’s assets
• Linking accounts so you know who has a mortgage that also has a checking account (and if they’re not using you, ask why)
• Creating a connected communications organization to capitalize on the most critical moments in a customer’s journey

And you can do all that with Salesforce.

Understand your customer journey with a 360-degree-view

Using Salesforce tools enables employees to be experts and advisors, eliminating clutter and friction by connecting all engagements to one platform. That way, they can spend more time focusing on the customer relationship and less time swiping between multiple views to try and find disparate pieces of information.

With Salesforce, you can build a 360-degree-view of the customer so you know at-a-glance which accounts they have, what branch they’re a part of, what customer service issues they’ve had, or whether or not they’ve indicated interest in additional services.

Once you have those key indicators — knowing when a member may be interested in doing business with you beyond their checking or savings account, like a mortgage or car loan — you can use the full power of your organization to give your customers the information they need and tip them from “maybe” to “yes.”

Growing deposits with Salesforce tools

Establishing targeted welcome programs with connected communications is what’s going to help you grow deposits — and your business. The more your customers see you as a trusted financial advisor, rather than a faceless institution, the more you’ll see customer retention and share of wallet expansion.

Silverline’s dedicated financial experts can help you make the most out of your Salesforce implementation. With help from Silverline, this same client saw a 100% increase in loan application submissions year-over-year, a 6% increase in approval rates to 53%, and an estimated revenue of $1MM in new production. And they’re just getting started.

Establish your own omnichannel onboarding program with help from our team, who can show you the ins and outs of growing deposits with Salesforce by mapping out specific flows and segmentation, and more.

Interested in growing your deposits with Salesforce? Reach out.