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Here are four CRM ingredients that can help a
community bank use the customer information
already at its disposal to enhance its bottom
line:
1. Relate Information
Successful community banks know their customers’
habits, the types of services they use, where
they live and work, and can quickly identify
their profitable customers. If your bank wants
to be more successful, it needs to ask three
questions on a regular basis:
* What do you know about your customers?
* What do you need to know about your customers?
* What is the profile of your profitable
customers?
The result of this research will be important
information that can be stored and accessed
through any customer-focused core system. If
your staff knows where to look, they can call up
a customer profile and see the customers’
product gaps.
To take maximum advantage of customer
information requires your bank to cleanse its
data — making the names and addresses
consistent, making sure that customer birth
dates have been entered. The resulting
consistent body of information is critical to
all CRM activities.
With clean, well-organized data, many
relationship management tools exist to help
model your customer base and manage your
prospects. To do this effectively, these tools
must be fully integrated with your bank’s core
and electronic banking systems. Without
integration, these CRM tools really don’t have
much value.
2. Establish a Sales and Service Culture
The key to any successful CRM program is
training your staff to participate in a sales
and service culture. You can have the best
customer information in the world, but if your
staff won’t sell your product, it doesn’t
matter.
The customer-focused information in today’s core
systems can help orient staff to customer needs.
If a teller feels s/he is serving a customer
rather than processing a transaction, selling
becomes a bit easier. And not just for the
teller. Customers will notice the difference
too! When customers are well served, they are
more receptive to new product offers.
If your staff understands the thinking behind
the bank’s customer model, they might generate
additional opportunities. For example, if a
customer regularly deposits extra funds to cover
checks they’ve written, an astute customer
service representative might notice this pattern
and suggest a
consumer loan. Taken to a higher level, the same
smart banking professional can use a modeling
system to uncover all the customers who exhibit
the same behavior. That’s using technology to
exploit new sales opportunities.
3. Develop a Profitability Plan
Today’s new CRM tools are intended to translate
theoretical opportunities into real revenue
production. While a noble aim, no bank can avail
itself of all opportunities. So choices need to
be made based on profitability.
Using the same information to define your
customers, particularly transaction data, you
can also develop a revenue plan based on
customer, product, and even branch
profitability. Today’s integrated CRM systems
have these capabilities, but your accounting
department may also have the tools for the job
such as an executive information or
profitability system.
The most important consideration for this CRM
ingredient is harnessing the attention of
everyone in your institution to your revenue
goals. It must be one of your institution’s top
priorities, and it must be reinforced with a
program of employee rewards and incentives.
4. Fit It All Together
CRM and profitability require bank-wide
commitment and consistency of message to staff,
customers and the broad market for your
financial services. While CRM systems continue
to evolve, integration remains the single
greatest stumbling block. To work effectively,
the bank’s core, electronic banking, and
profitability systems must be thoroughly
integrated with the CRM system.
If your bank doesn’t have access to this level
of integrated solutions, don’t despair! The
ingredients are available today, and the time to
begin accumulating them is now. Ingenuity and
sound advice can help tremendously in starting
your journey to the “golden” tomorrow of
integrated CRM solutions.
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