Three Banker Concerns About Staff Generating Revenue

We asked an executive of a well-known core processing company with a CRM component what “people issues” their call center and trainers were asked repeatedly. After surveying these groups, the executive found they were receiving many questions on culture and behavior and how they could help the clients in these areas. Here are three examples of questions they get all the time:

1. The Relationship Manager concept. Does it make sense for our bank credit union? How should we use it?

Many financial institutions have invested in or are thinking of investing in some kind of a CRM system but they focus more on the tech side and very little on “the people side”. They forget that technology does not build relationships – their people do. Identifying lists of target customers for outreach and training key staff in member or customer relationship management skills are two of many considerations.

Lesson: Any implementation must integrate the tech side with the people side, get the crucial employee buy-in and have a process to make it all work.

2. What more do we need to know about the onboarding process and best practices?

We tell our clients that onboarding is a good practice for connecting with NEW customers or members but banks and credit unions just don’t focus enough on connecting with existing customers or members. Plus, “onboarding” drops off dramatically after 90 days so employees are not capturing customer or member life events and recording them in some kind of a profile to build the customer relationship.

Lesson: A bank or credit union won’t reap the benefit of repeat business a CRM system can help with if they are just focused on “newbies” in the first 90 days. They need an outreach process to get staff using the software on an ongoing basis with existing customers or members.

3. Training new staff and keeping staff current on sales processes and application usage. Many of our staff still don’t like cross selling. What’s the answer?

Banks and credit unions want to differentiate themselves by creating a relationship culture and building trust with customers or members. Yet most are still focused on a transactional cross selling and product pitching model and rewarding the wrong behaviors.

Lesson: They need to be educated on how the old sales model is a never-ending treadmill. Realize that many employees hate selling but love relationship building. Implementing an organizational process to reach out to those who don’t come into the branches and equipping staff with member and customer relationship management skills will reap great rewards.

Agree or disagree? Do let us know what you think by scrolling down and commenting below.

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