Improve Customer Retention & Satisfaction Through Effective Onboarding
Attracting new customers is the top priority for most banks and credit unions. Getting their attention, proving your value, targeting marketing messages toward them, and ultimately securing the account can be a long-term play. But once you’ve landed a new customer, the journey often comes to a screeching halt, which can be disorienting for your new customers — and, in the long run, bad for your bottom line.
Research shows that 80% of financial institutions are still not satisfied with their onboarding program. Despite having the closest relationships with the clients they serve, community banks reported being the least satisfied with their onboarding efforts. Sound familiar?
Most organizations fail to fully understand that onboarding is an important financial decision — not only in customer acquisition, but also in growing revenue through cross-sell and up-sell activities. With 360 View, you can completely automate your onboarding process by replacing cumbersome manual processes with a flexible, powerful, easy-to-use tool.
Follow these four steps to enhance your onboarding process even further.
1. Don’t Drop Off the Map As Soon As You Get the Account
After being pursued for weeks or months, most new consumers expect their new financial institution to continue the steady stream of communication after they open an account. Research has shown that consumers want frequent, quality communications from their financial institution — especially at the start of the relationship. Their consumer experiences have conditioned them to expect a series of messages that welcome them and assist in the onboarding process.
The customer who has just purchased a product or service with your organization wants guidance, recommendations, and reassurance that they made the right decision. Customer satisfaction increases as the number of communications from a financial institution increase. Make sure you have an onboarding campaign in place so that you can seamlessly transition new accounts into valued customers.
2. Engage Your Customers On Multiple Channels
The optimal number of messages to deliver to your new customers during the first six months is seven or more. However, 45% of respondents with an onboarding program only sent 1-2 messages during the onboarding period. Reaching customers across multiple channels is proven to improve retention, engagement, cross-selling, customer satisfaction, and marketing ROI.
360 View CRM gives you the wealth of actionable data necessary to drive consistent multi-channel onboarding — whether it’s through email, phone, direct mail or other targeted communication channels. Leveraging frontline employees who are already engaging with customers everyday is a great way to build a strong program that nurtures customer relationships and improves profitability. With 360 View CRM SmartPops, you can prompt employees with customer-specific sales and service messages at your frontline, call center, or during any customer interaction that make every customer feel known and valued.
3. Automate Marketing Messages
It’s hard to keep up with the increasing volume and needs of new customers. Community banks often struggle to create effective customer onboarding programs due to slow, cumbersome manual processes. Many have found value in automating onboarding activities using a CRM. With 360 View, once a new customer is in the system, you can automatically prompt touch points that thank new customers for their business, offer them valuable content, and continue to nurture your relationship with them during the crucial onboarding period.
Marketing automation promotes customer retention, nurtures relationships, and grows customers by allowing you to promote the right products to the right people at the right time. 360 View brings in information from across your institution, along with the robust profile information contained within the CRM itself, giving you the wealth of actionable data necessary to drive effective marketing.
4. Offer Personalized Recommendations for Each Customer
Research indicates that a lack of personalization and targeting during the onboarding process is another major obstacle for community banks to overcome. A horizon opportunity is for more firms to begin using advanced analytics (such as those provided through a CRM) to augment their ability to leverage real-time, personalized offers. Through 360 View, many community banks already have access to the customer data needed to drive personalized offers.
By having all customer data in one place (including core account info and third-party data), you can easily map your products and offerings to meet customer’s real needs at the right time. Tailoring your communications to each customer using data-driven insights makes every interaction feel less like sales and more like service, positioning yourself as a trusted advisor.
Ultimately, the research reveals a significant opportunity for onboarding program improvement. There is room for growth in marketing automation, multi-channel communications strategies, personalized product offerings, front-line interactions and more. The good news? With just a few simple changes and by leveraging the latest CRM technology, your institution can see significant improvements in revenue, retention, satisfaction and more.
Want to learn more about how to automate your onboarding program? Schedule a live demo!