Considering the amount of effort your financial institution puts into acquiring new customers, your attention to retain customers by differentiating yourself should be a top priority.
However, in the banking world, differentiation can sometimes prove challenging. Consider the following ways to make your financial institution stand out and create a unique, personalized experience for your customers in order to drive loyalty.
Put a Face On Your Digital Offerings
Any time a representative interacts with a customer via a phone discussion or an online chat, provide a picture of your employee. Showing a human face helps establish an otherwise absent bond. Similarly, when you send email offerings, include notes from your leadership with their signatures and pictures to help humanize your organization.
Coach Your Branch Staff to Establish Rapport
When a customer walks into your branch location, hopefully you have a trained universal banker staff to hold their hand through the process. By training your representatives to introduce themselves and make a bit of small talk, they can create a relationship with the customer that transcends business. By doing so, your customer will associate the individual with your brand and have an enhanced connection to your financial institution.
Utility of Technology
Your organization’s efforts to improve your website and mobile app are only as valuable as the individual user’s ability to navigate your platform. Hopefully, your team has worked hard to create an intuitive experience that quickly maximizes the user’s comprehension of your platform. However, a guiding hand can often make the difference between a rudimentary understanding and your customers finding true value in your app.
Make sure your app has regular “pop-up” tutorials to walk users through new features, especially after updates are released. Similarly, “help” features along with live chat support are major differentiators to help ensure your technology is utilized to its full potential. Your organization’s ability to quickly answer tech-related questions eliminates a major pain point and ensures optimal usage of the platforms you’ve invested in.
Smart Offerings
Your organization should be able to make the most of the customer data available to you — leveraging data to create tailored offers for additional products and services that will benefit your customers.
Beyond presenting customers with timely and applicable offers, make sure your message is accurate and clear as well. Speak clearly about what you’re offering, why you think it makes sense, and try to avoid industry jargon.
For example, if a customer has a large amount of cash regularly sitting around that they don’t utilize, your organization should offer a CD in clear terms, noting that you’ve observed their cash sitting idly, you think you can help them, and present a quick explanation for how they can maximize their interest rate.
Offerings and descriptions such as these help keep your relationship with your customers fresh and show that your organization will continue to court them and value their business long into your relationship.
