Will a phone call be the start of your next customer success story?

Calling a customer for a simple reason opens the door to opportunity. Wish them a happy birthday, recognize a customer anniversary milestone, or just thank them for being a new customer are easy relationship building examples.

A maturing CD or loan, a HELOC draw period coming to maturity, a large deposit or withdrawal, a disengaged customer, a direct deposit cancellation, and a new address are also valid reasons to have a conversation with the customer. These are how banks who proactively call their customers start their success stories.

More Conversations → More Opportunities to Help → Increased Loyalty → Retention and Growth

More conversations with customers create a greater understanding of their personal and financial situation. Every need, regardless of the size or the timing, presents an opportunity to help a customer. By staying informed of their current and future needs, each conversation builds rapport, confidence, and trust. With increased loyalty, you are both increasing retention and opening the door to growth.

A sit-n-serve culture is no longer effective on the “new normal” playing field. Waiting for the customer to walk into the branch and ask for help isn’t going to support the bank's service standards or growth objectives.

The Challenge

• Decline of branch traffic

• Staffing inexperience with building relationships with customers and prospects

• Increased competition from non-traditional providers

• Lacking customer contact management tools built specifically for the banking industry and integrated with the bank’s core processing system

• Customers afraid to visit the branch due to COVID-19

The Solution

• Utilize time to personally call customers and prospects to build relationships

• Front line associates need quality information to help focus relationship building efforts

• Leverage your data to know Who, When and Why to connect with your customer

• Provide relationship building skills training to enable personal bankers to have effective conversation and to listen for life events that have a financial impact

• Take ownership by initiating a conversation by calling your customers to build that rapport and to identify ways to help your customer

• Invest in a solution built specifically for customer contact management in the banking industry that is integrated with the core banking system.

Now is the time to create a WOW moment for your customer leveraging the human element to execute on the bank's strategy to providing superior customer service.

An email is not the same as a personal phone call because it doesn’t enable you to learn anything new about the customer and does little to distinguish your bank from your competitors.

Anything worth doing takes a little more time and effort. To enhance a relationship and grow the bank, use the power of a phone call.