Today, retail bank and credit union customers spend less time in the branch than ever before. The lack of personal face to face interactions with the assigned account officer does make it difficult for bankers to guage the true satisfaction level of clients and to position themselves effectively to offer other appropriate financial solutions. Some may argue that the relationship banker should be doing a better job of leveraging his Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform to plan his day more effectively, be more proactive in reaching clients, and scheduling account reviews. However, the fact of the matter is that clients sometimes choose to focus on their finances after traditional business hours. They value the convenience and personal freedom of being able to utilize a Bank’s call center or to conduct their banking online from their home or over their mobile device. Moreover, they cherish having the ability to use any of the closest branches, ATMs, or drive-thrus whenever and wherever it makes sense if they are running errands or traveling the country. Some, of course, still routinely come into their neighborhood branch. However, for those who typically do not interact with branch banking staff, how are you supposed to know when they may not be entirely happy with the overall state of their banking relationship?
A banker without CRM will typically have no insight into negative customer service experiences that their top clients may encounter. Nevertheless, bankers with CRM still may not always be informed of all things going on with a customer’s account if the unfortunate interaction does not directly involve him. The reason being, the banker may not have checked out the account profile in CRM to see what has been going on recently with the particular threatened or unhappy account. To overcome these challenges, retail banks can utilize and to automatically deliver email alert notifications to the account officer. For instance, assume a top-tier client contacts the call center late one night to obtain a loan payoff inquiry, try to get a fee refunded, and express a complaint about the “downtown” branch. Odds are that the client is considering paying off the account soon. With the help of CRM, the call center rep can apologize for the bad service, provide the loan pay-off amount, and record the details of the call. Once that phone call interaction is saved, the account officer will then receive an email informing him of the phone conversation. Naturally, the account officer will be concerned and does not want to lose a portion or all of one of his most valued client’s business. Thus, the banker can follow-up with the customer the very next day to again apologize for the service, discuss the fee refund request, and see how he might be able to help the client’s current and future borrowing needs. Doing so, may result in a quick refinance application and preservation of the relationship. Without the workflow alert, though, the account officer would not have known in time and the client’s loan account would have been the first of many to gradually be closed forever.
Besides call center personnel, other employees, such as tellers and CSRs, can also enter certain client interaction events or behaviors in CRM that trigger the workflow automation of the escalation process. Other potential scenarios for workflow emails to generate can involve identity theft, fraud, lost or stolen checks, credit cards, and debit cards. These are frightening experiences for any client to go through and they would welcome a friendly follow-up from their account officer to reconnect and restore trust in the relationship. Lastly, workflows can additionally be crafted to expedite the communication of leads needing follow-up as well, such as a customer who inquires about mortgage rates at the end of a teller transaction or call center conversation.
Customer Effective has tailored the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for leading banking institutions and positioned them to differentiate their client experience, improve client and colleague communication and collaboration, and increase client retention and overall cross-sell success. To learn more about how CRM can grow your revenues and give you more comprehensive insights into your client base than ever before, please visit .
Post by: Kevin Wessels, Customer Effective
Really fantastic this will really reduce the customer hiccups and solve many customer related issues.