How to turn customers into advocates
It’s simple logic that ‘millenials’ are the future for wealth management divisions. What isn’t certain is how prepared the industry is for their demands on service, streamlined interactions and desire for digital round-the-clock access. The next generation is also far less loyal to the usual suspects of the major banks and their affiliates.
Findings in the 2015 World Retail Banking Report by Capgemini show that the financial services industry is faced with the “real and imminent” threat of disintermediation due to the evolving nature of customer preferences, as increasingly customers look toward the services offered by digital disruptors and non-bank competitors.
“The ability to cultivate loyal customers who refer the bank to others [is critical], thus drastically reducing the cost and effort of acquiring new customers,” the report states.
With Gen Y customers identified as being the “most likely to switch banks”, financial services institutions are therefore faced with two key pain points that need to be addressed: low customer satisfaction rates and increasingly high customer attrition rates.
Omni-channel is key
A unified and comprehensive omni-channel approach is thus necessary for engaging with customers in the right way and at the right time. This will help to maximise sales productivity by promoting accountability and genuine engagement across all customer touchpoints.
For banks and wealth management companies, this approach can be broken down into 3 key objectives.
1) The transparency of information
Data from every customer interaction needs to readily available and shareable across the different lines of business to ensure a consistency in service delivery and execution. By enhancing engagement with customers through the immediacy of contact and the relevance of information provided, banks can help facilitate timely offerings and coordinated outreach that would strengthen their rate of customer acquisition.
2) Encouraging cross-team selling and collaboration
The fragmentation in internal data consistency and information sharing has resulted in barriers to selling across different business units. To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of overall operations, cross-team collaboration must be a central part of an organisation’s culture, allowing sales opportunities to be identified quickly and leads and referrals actioned by the appropriate line of business. This will help to promote a streamlined selling ethos through the prioritisation of leads based on salient characteristics, such as the prospect’s prior history with the bank, the size of the transactions and their propensity to buy.
3) Fast and personalised service
According to a 2015 Credio U.S. Banking report on customer satisfaction earlier this year, nearly 1 in 3 respondents (29.47 per cent) identified customer support as the primary reason for why they are satisfied with their bank. With a focus on consolidating customer retention and loyalty through personalised customer service, banks can form a comprehensive 360-degree view of the customer that draws on data from every touchpoint and interaction.
With a focus on providing intelligent customer segmentation capabilities and a seamless cross-channel experience, the Salesforce Customer Success Platform provides banks with a powerful platform for greater collaboration, multi-touch marketing and a dramatically improved customer experience.
Download this white paper to find out more about Salesforce’s solution.
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