4 Ways Customer Relationship Management Is Making a Difference During COVID
In this difficult time of limited customer contact, see how CRM is helping financial institutions keep their teams united and connected to customers.
More than a few businesses have described CRM as a pricey, time-consuming, narrowly effective technology investment. But in the current crisis, there is a collective rethink going on. The often underutilized CRM is getting a well-deserved fresh look and coming up shining.
Glen Marks at Forbes makes note of this: “For years and for multiple reasons, many of our clients have under-utilized the capabilities of the CRM software they already own. But now – and unfortunately thanks to the COVID-19 – many are being forced to re-visit and leverage all the things that they should have been leveraging in their CRM systems in order to make sure sales are pursued, customers are served and employees are productive, even when they’re out of the office.”
As is often the case in emergencies, it’s the mild-mannered, not-so-noticeable person that emerges as a hero. Who thinks much of the flashlight until the lights go out?
Here are four ways CRM’s are making a night-and-day difference for financial institutions and their customers right now.
1. Enabling Effective Remote Work
With limits on social contact still in place, gone are the times of walking over and chatting with another team member about a particular customer’s needs or concerns. As many lobbies continue to be closed and many team members are working from home, using a CRM to record every interaction with a customer enables every customer contact to be on point.
Customized workflow reminders and alerts ensure all team members stay in sync and are particularly helpful to remote team members responsible for in-office workloads.
2. Connecting the Disconnected
Most CRMs now allow for a useful connection to a company’s website so that customer traffic and meaningful customer interaction at the website can be logged and integrated in the CRM. Creating the single clearinghouse for website interactions and direct interactions with team members contributes to the seamless feel a financial institution can offer today where in-person business is pre-empted. Add to this the integration of company email and calendars (through Outlook for instance), then the gaps truly begin to close. Customer interactions across team members and across technology touch points become consistent.
3. Providing Pipeline Management for PPP
As financial institutions have been given the important task of facilitating the government’s ambitious Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP), implementing this new and changing process effectively is paramount. Businesses and individuals are depending on financial institutions to get it right, and get it right the first time. Many CRMs offer a pipeline management feature that allows for developing custom workflows suited for situations just like the PPP process. Add to this the use of referral features and alerts, and the possibility of PPP applications getting lost in a chain of complicated steps is virtually eliminated.
4. Automating Email Communications
CRMs offer the efficient feature of bulk email communication. Most often this is useful for marketing campaigns or automating cyclical customer communications. In this unusual time, as specific branch services relocate and branch hours change according to local COVID-19 restrictions, being able to simply and successfully communicate this type of common information to all bank customers simultaneously is invaluable.
Certainly there are many more benefits to acquiring a CRM (or ramping up the utilization of your current CRM), but looking at only these four powerful contributions in the current situation, it’s not surprising to hear a banker in Central Illinois recently say, “This investment is more important than ever before because it has increased our ability to communicate internally regarding all customer touch points.” Katie Harris from Equity Bank speaks specifically about CRM’s impact on their internal work processes, “We’ve seen a great surge in the number of users due to our new SBA processes. We are utilizing pipelines, activities, and referrals to take care of our customers.” Real bankers with these types of real experiences offer testimonies worth registering.
Say what you will about the blah-blah reputation of CRMs in the last decade. If you are a financial institution that wants to foster strong relationships with customers and maintain a tight-knit internal team, the current crisis is offering a clear view of CRM as a valuable and necessary tool.
Transform Your Business with the 360 View CRM
Want to know more about how 360 View’s CRM software can help you in the current climate? Check out this video, which gives an overview of our product including the features discussed in this article. Or, request a live demo with our team, and we’ll show just how our platform works.
