What is customer engagement?
Customer engagement is how your business (in this case, a bank) interacts with its customers and develops a relationship over time. When it comes to customer engagement in banking, the goal is to craft a relationship with your customers so they are encouraged to stay with your bank for many years. By building trust with your customers as well as a positive reputation for customer engagement, you will create new customers with ease and be able to sell more to your current customers. This is not a skill to be underestimated. With so much competition in the space, particularly with the new exclusively online banks, you need to stay ahead of the curve.
So how can you create a truly engaging experience with great customer engagement? In this article, we will cover this as well as some things to avoid, what first steps to take, and how Sefas can help you make your customer engagement strategy simple to run and effective. So let’s dive right in with how you can improve your customer engagement.
How can I improve customer engagement in banking?
Gather actionable data from your customers
How can you begin to understand your customer base on a deeper level? Of course, you can simply gather data from them about how they interact with your services and apps. This is what most banks do as a minimum. However, if you want to truly stand out and be at the front of the pack, you need to speak directly to your customers. By offering a customer survey, you can ask them important questions such as how they rate your services, what services they mainly use, and how you could improve your services in the future. You can also include a comments section so that they can go more in-depth on an individual basis. Your customers will appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback, however, it is important to use this feedback and at least take it on board. Find ways to handle the data and implement positive changes.
Omni Channel Communications
Your customers are no longer communicating with your bank by entering the bank or over the phone. These days, many people handle their finances via a banking app, or online. Your customers want quick communications from their bank on their preferred platforms. Providing an omni-channel communications strategy simply means that you offer consistent communications and information across all of your working platforms. This provides brand consistency and allows your customers to easily interact with your business where they choose. Implementing an omni-channel strategy can be challenging, which is where Sefas can help. We offer an omni-channel software called the Harmonie Communication Suite which provides everything that you need to implement this strategy.
Invest in technology
Put money into your communications strategy! This is not a guaranteed way to gain results as you need to put the work in to understand your audience and what they want from your business communications. However, by not investing in your customer communications, you will only be falling behind the competition. By investing in better communications software, chatbots, phone apps, and support staff for your customers, you will reap the rewards and keep up with the competition.
What to avoid
Passive engagement with customers
To keep your customers happy, particularly as a bank, you are going to want to offer regular communications that provide them with all of the information that they require. If your customers find you are difficult to get into contact with, fail to send update emails quickly, or your customer service is shaky at best then they are likely to seek out one of your competitors. Engage your customers with regular email updates, make your communications as secure as possible, and make sure that your customers feel heard.
Overselling or not listening to the data
The only thing that annoys a customer more than a lack of communication, is excessive and pointless communication. Your customers are busy people, they don’t have all day to sit and read a large 15-page document or an email offering them a service that they aren’t even eligible for. This comes back to customer listening, and understanding your audience. You need to use your customer data and feedback to strategically offer your customers your services at the right times. This will both avoid annoying your customers, and also create a potential increase in conversions for your efforts as you are only offering specific services to your ideal audience. Investing in top-quality customer listening and customer communications software will allow you to easily find and communicate a message to the right customers.
Ignoring customer feedback
Listening to customer feedback is vital for optimising customer engagement in banking. Taking onboard feedback can be difficult, particularly when it is negative. This is not the attitude to have if you want a successful customer engagement strategy. Engaging with customers does not mean much if they are not being listened to. Take your customer feedback on board and see how you can use it to improve your services. Customers often have useful suggestions, and you will then create deeper customer loyalty as well as potentially attract new customers who see you offering something unique compared to your competitors.
What first steps should you take as a business?
Customer engagement in banking is important, and taking that first step to further improve upon it is great. You should begin by looking at what is lacking in your current customer communications strategies. Are you lacking the right software and staff, or perhaps you are lacking information on your customer’s wants and needs? Start by gathering information on your customers. What are your demographics? What services are your most popular? Once you have this, look into how you can optimise or improve your current customer engagement strategy.
How Sefas can help with your bank’s customer engagement
Here at Sefas, we are a CCM software provider with many years of experience. We have a wide customer base, including customers in the banking industry. We understand the importance of secure communications and the need to follow regulations that are constantly evolving. Our CCM software includes an auditing tool that will automatically scan and review all communications to ensure that they are following regulations. To find out more about the Harmonie Communication Suite and how it can support your bank’s efforts with customer engagement, get in contact today.