All Talk, No Action? How to Use CRM to Get Things Done

Banks need something different to empower growth.

Existing tools are inadequate and disjointed: bankers might be using the core banking system along with spreadsheets, emails, appointment books, or sticky notes — but those aren’t shared across the organization, so knowledge becomes siloed. As a result, the customer isn’t serviced appropriately, sales efforts are crippled, and growth is stifled. 

Financial institutions need to unify systems to provide easy access to knowledge across every department, make bankers more efficient, improve sales and marketing, enhance customer service, and provide tools that allow everyone in the organization to get things done — which is the key to meaningful growth.

Here’s how banks and credit unions can position themselves for growth:

By Building a Personalized, Customer-Centric Sales Strategy

Establishing a customer-centric, personalized sales strategy has never been more important. Basing your sales strategy off of the customer’s real needs is essential to growing and winning new business. Banks have to establish a needs-based approach to sales — and that starts with truly understanding their customers.

Your customers want you to demonstrate that you understand their problems and specific needs and that you want to help solve them. Gaining insight into those needs happens through advanced analytics. Data lets you understand your customer's needs and how to grow the relationship, identify where the opportunities are, maximize your efforts, and focus your attention where it’s going to have the most impact. Enhanced insight leads to better cross-selling tactics, more effective communication and ultimately contributes to your bottom line.

By Empowering Customer Retention & New Acquisition

If you want to support your bank’s sales culture and win new business, a technology solution like 360 View CRM can streamline tasks and accelerate growth. With the ability to track customer touch points, your sales team will be more engaged with the customer’s needs. 360 View can help them identify opportunities and then record that information so that knowledge is available to anyone that might interact with the customer throughout the sales funnel.

Growing existing customers is just as vital — perhaps more — than attracting new customers. Banks spend a significant percentage of their time trying to retain existing clients. Empower your team to have more relevant conversations with their customer base to help them grow and retain customers. 360 View's tools helps retain customers and grow business through things like automated onboarding and retention programs. This way, business isn’t walking out the door at the same time that new business is coming in.

By Documenting Prospect & Customer Touch Points

Many organizations plan follow-ups with prospects and customers — but what if that employee leaves the bank? Many times, that means the ball gets dropped because there is no record of past interactions and future follow-ups. The new contact person has no context about their relationship, no clue what the customer was expecting, and no idea when to follow up. Banks need a tool to maintain consistency, build relationships, enhance customer experience, and manage touch points with a customer or prospect throughout their relationship with the bank.

360 View’s Activities feature is a way to manage touch points happening with a customer or prospect. It is a “story of your customer” that tracks all of the touch points and gives the banker the knowledge of how to engage them in the next interaction. Your staff can keep track of interactions then anyone can reference them in follow-up conversations. In doing so, you will decrease redundant conversations, avoid stepping on colleagues’ toes, and make transitions seamless for employees, prospects, and clients alike.

By Enabling Real Action Across Your Organization

Once you have a record of customer touch points, you can transform that data into action points. How many prospect visits have we done this month? What about retention visits? Which types of touch points are proving effective — and which are not? The answers to these questions will inform and shape your growth strategy. 

For instance, a banker can access 360 View CRM and document a phone conversation with a prospect or customer through the Activities feature. By recording that interaction and what it was about, anyone can be informed and knowledgable for future follow-ups. Multiple team members can be attached to an Activity and receive instant updates on the status. Activities can be assigned to other team members, reminders set in their daily queue, and metrics established for effectiveness, ultimately empowering growth throughout your organization.

A technology solution is the obvious choice for banks that want to grow while maintaining close customer relationships that can be managed by anyone in the bank.

Traditional CRMs just provide a place to store the information, but banks need the ability to do much more than that; they need project management, task management, insight into profitability, the ability to manage marketing campaigns, automate onboarding and much more.

At 360 View, we understand the business, processes, structure, and organizational set-up of financial institutions and our product was specifically built for banks and credit unions. Our tool delivers actionable information — not just static data. We provide a way to act on that information and stimulate real growth for your institution. Discover how 360 View can be the growth platform for your organization by setting up a live demo today.