FEATURE

TUNING AND TOOLING FOR GROWTH

DAVID DERVISH AND KEITH VON SEGGERN OF FISERV EXPLAIN HOW ALIGNING CRM TECHNOLOGY WITH WELL-DESIGNED SALES PROCESSES WILL LEAD TO VALUE-RICH INTERACTIONS AND A LOYAL AND PROFITABLE CUSTOMER BASE

he financial crisis has motivated many consumers and businesses to rethink who they trust with their money. As a result, those banks that have capital are benefiting from a flight to safety as consumers put their trust and money into banks with reputations for strong performance. In the short run, the deposit growth from bank-switching is obviously welcomed by the banks which are benefiting. But the uplift could be fleeting for many and opportunities could be missed by institutions which fail to proactively target new money and secure and expand new relationships quickly. As confidence returns to financial markets and stumbling competitors regain their footing, term deposits will mature, and the switchers may be wooed back to their prior institutions. The solution, of course, is to target and attract as many of these bankswitchers as possible during the chaos and to systematically entrench and deepen relationships with new customers early on to earn more of their wallet share. Savvy banks will capitalise on this opportunity through consistent, effective execution of a few basic tactics and by ensuring that critical sales and relationship management practices are well-supported by bankers customer relationship management (CRM) and sales automation software. There are several areas that banks should focus on in order to fine tune key sales practices and align supporting technology tools as they attempt to secure and expand new relationships. The first is customer profiling. By gathering information that

focuses on payments, preferences, permissions and future needs, using inbound servicing interactions as an opportunity to gather or update profiles and assess needs continuously, banks will gain invaluable knowledge about their customers needs. To be successful, banks must ensure that insights gained are kept in a central system and leverage the data in both inbound and outbound cross-sales efforts. The on-boarding process should also be an area of focus. In order to make a good first impression with customers banks should develop a seamless customer on-boarding process that ensures suitable proactive contact with new customers over the initial days, weeks and months of the relationship. They should ensure the process is effectively managed through a workflow system that assigns, schedules and escalates follow up tasks and outbound contact. Banks can also leverage insights discovered during profiling to uncover further opportunities throughout the on-boarding process. Localised sales campaigns can further help banks in their bid to deepen customer relationships empowering bankers to target and reach out to customers and prospects with meaningful and timely offers that will generate new relationships and build on existing ones. This can easily be done by providing guidance and tools to let bankers adjust outbound direct marketing campaigns to fit their portfolio of customers and their local markets in support of a welldefined sales strategy and clear priorities for retention, cross-sell and acquisition. These are common sense measures but are

often challenging to execute because banks business processes and software applications have generally been designed and deployed in isolation of one another. Bank technology investments have focused more on processing efficiency, regulatory compliance and service fulfilment, and less on supporting proactive sales and relationship management. So customer insight is often buried in multiple legacy systems and sales processes are rarely supported by technology, let alone automated. Profiling or needs assessment, for example, is executed sporadically at most banks and is still often paper-based. Where needs assessment forms have been built into software, they are not well-connected to onboarding processes and the insights gathered are not leveraged in customer service and sales processes. Customers expect their bank to know them and to

demonstrate awareness of their relationship history and financial needs at every point of contact. But because profile information is not gathered, shared or refreshed adequately, it can lead to missed opportunities and even to missed expectations with customers who disclosed personal information and expected the bank to do something with it. Aligning CRM technology with welldesigned sales processes preserves the content and context of the information to create and maintain an institutional memory that documents the voice and behaviour of the customer for the entire banking enterprise. The result is that every time the bank touches the customer or the customer touches the bank, a value-rich interaction will occur. The bottom line result is more a loyal customer who generates revenue growth through cross sales and becomes an advocate for the bank.

Customers expect their bank to know them and to demonstrate awareness of their relationship history and financial needs at every point of contact

Delivery Channels Partner Guide 2009/10