How Enterprise Cross-Sell Can Improve Customer Service
By Kristie K Heinemann
Consumers' trust in the financial industry has been shaken. Banks need to be able to make their customers feel comfortable with their banking experience and offer them products that can be interwoven into the fabric of their day-to-day activities.
The products that are offered should enhance customers' lifestyles and not be irrelevant or impersonal.
Enterprise cross-sell enables banks and their employees to offer their products in a way that will improve their customer service efforts and make consumers feel good about the services they are getting.
Enterprise cross-sell is when financial institutions (FIs) use technology to connect all lines of business (LOBs) and make them available to the customer. Enterprise cross-sell solutions allow banks to search through their LOBs and compare their customers' needs to the benefits their products offer.
This technology solution can also help a FI's customer service representatives (CSRs) by giving them scripts and enabling them to successfully offer the product.
These things put together in one package enhances the customer experience and leads to better and longer customer relationships through increased account origination.
Enterprise cross-sellallows FIs to offer relevant product offerings to their customers. Enterprise-cross sell solutions can search through customer data and find products for which they are qualified, that they are most likely to be interested in or actually use.
If a customer uses their debit card often but doesn't have a card that offers rewards, it is possible that the customer could be interested in a credit card that offers the person rewards for spending their money in the same way.
When a customer receives an offer that is relevant to their lifestyle, they get the sense that the bank knows them as a person and not an account number.
As the number of financial products that the consumer uses increases, they are likely to feel more loyalty to the bank and they will be less likely to attrite.
When a customer service representative offers a consumer a product, it can cause tension when the customer feels like they are being solicited in their own bank.
Salespeople have the reputation of being pushy and dishonest because they only want to make money and aren't looking out for the best interest of the consumer. Enterprise cross-sell solutions can provide CSRs with a script to make the selling process more natural. Banks want to be seen as a close financial advisor and not as an insincere salesperson.
These scripts give the CSR important information about the product so they seem informed and knowledgeable. This makes the customer more confident in the product and increases the likelihood of them accepting the offer.
Enterprise cross-sell allows banks to increase their wallet-share through the strategies mentioned above. CSRs are able to successfully sell a product without feeling pushy or uncomfortable; this makes them happier with their job and, in turn, they give better customer service.
The products that are offered are relevant to the customer and they enhance their lifestyle instead of adding clutter.
Customers are satisfied with their experiences at the bank and they are satisfied with the products they are offered. Customer satisfaction leads to longer and more profitable customer relationships.
With enterprise cross-sell, FIs have a great opportunity to improve their customer service efforts and make their customers and CSRs feel more comfortable. New technology enables FIs to use these strategies well and, in the process, FIs can create profitable loyal, long-term customers.
Kristie Heinemann is an online marketing specialist at Zoot Enterprises in Bozeman, Montana. She holds a BS in marketing and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin La Crosse.
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