Why a Banking CRM Refresh Is Your Best Bet in a Tough Market

Bank leaders have been under pressure recently to retain and grow deposits and loans amid soaring interest rates. Tech upgrades can help banks build the customer experience they need to achieve these goals. Still, stubbornly high rates are crimping lending margins, making investing in expensive CX projects difficult.

That doesn't mean banks should stay in a holding pattern, though. A CRM refresh can net a considerable ROI, even in a challenging market, by helping banks improve their customer experience using existing data. The key is deploying the right features, providing adequate training, and identifying what is best to build custom.

We've been consistently impressed with Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. If you're not already using this platform (or aren't sure you're maximizing its value), now is a great time to explore its capabilities or reassess your organization's use.

As you do that, I recommend paying particular attention to these three functionalities, which can benefit nearly every bank in some capacity.

Intelligent Workflows Can Uncover Relevant Sales Opportunities

The best upsell and cross-sell opportunities identify the right customer at the right time in their financial journey. Without adequate personalization, customers may not bite on, say, a new credit card offer. Or worse, they could apply and get rejected, costing banks with zero reward.

Financial Services Cloud can help banks identify the most relevant upsell and cross-sell opportunities for each customer. Intelligent sales workflows use rich customer data (from the core banking platform, loan origination system, etc.) to personalize every offer. 

For instance, imagine a customer who's just bought a high-value home. Based on their brokerage account data, they have a stable income, minimal debt, and excellent credit. They also have a healthy risk tolerance.

A Salesforce workflow can use these factors to gauge whether the customer is a good fit for a home equity line of credit. Then, it can deliver a custom offer six months after the home purchase. This way, customers get a well-timed offer they're more likely to accept.

Does your bank need these workflows? Evaluate your sales strategy to discover where you're leaving the most money. Then, consider testing a handful of workflows tailored to those opportunities and measure their revenue impact. This testing will help you understand where and how Financial Services Cloud can create value.

Automation Can Ensure Faster and More Accurate Compliance

Relying primarily on manual compliance processes can increase staff burden and take time away from customer relationships.

Financial Services Cloud has easy-to-configure automation designed to help banks comply with everything from FINRA to Regulation E. You can use the platform to:

Automate KYC checks via third-party database integrations that make verifying identities easier and cross-checking against sanctions lists. 

Issue e-disclosures to stay compliant with data privacy regulations. 

Create customer due diligence workflows that trigger reviews at regular intervals or after specific events, like a string of unusual transactions. 

Other time-saving tools, like optical character recognition, make extracting data from financial documents easier. To understand whether these Salesforce features can help your team, ask employees which compliance tasks eat up their time. Then, see whether Financial Services Cloud can automate some or all of that work.

Analytics Can Enable More Personalized Customer Support

Many customers have routine financial activities that banks can learn about. For example, customers may call around the same time yearly to authorize a foreign card transaction because they're on their annual trip to Canada. Or perhaps they overdraw their account every few months because of a significant unplanned expense.

Financial Services Cloud can pick up on these trends and proactively alert customer service reps to take action.

For example, the platform can flag the annual occurrence of a foreign card transaction. Then, a customer service rep can make a note to authorize the transaction and schedule a yearly email reminder for the customer to notify the bank of any upcoming international travel.

As for the overdraft scenario, a customer service rep can use the identified pattern to inform a customer education approach. For example, they can suggest the customer add a savings account to cover checking overdrafts or share financial planning resources with the customer.

Personalized customer service can positively impact customer satisfaction, which is critical for retaining and growing deposits. However, your team must understand how to use Financial Services Cloud effectively to yield these benefits. If you plan to invest in or customize this software, carefully onboard employees. And check in often to ensure they find the analytics helpful. The more they use the platform, the greater your ROI will be.

Maximize ROI with a Strong Implementation Strategy

A highly customizable CRM like Salesforce can help banks create stronger and stickier customer relationships, no matter the current market. But without the right implementation strategy, paying for features that don't create value is easy.

If you're interested in adopting Salesforce or modifying your current instance, it's worth making a game plan with the help of an experienced partner. The right one will assist with everything we've discussed, from identifying high-value use cases to measuring the impact over time. They'll even help you locate areas where custom-built alternatives could be more cost-effective. This way, you'll be able to maximize the ROI of your Salesforce investment.

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