A recent poll found that financial firms lose approximately 45% of their customers due to lengthy response times and delay in providing even reasonable customer service.
This is proving suicidal for financial providers in an age where customers demand instant fulfillment and convenience over legacy.
Social CRM on a unified platform can empower banks to create more qualified leads that converts to happy customers. It also serves as a launch pad for analyzing responses to new customer initiatives and accordingly, modifying campaign strategies.
However, social CRM has its specific set of challenges as listed below:
1.Most of the large banks generate maximum profits through corporate banking and there is a general opinion in the financial industry that Social Media is more for the individuals than for corporations and hence, not considered as valuable option for boosting revenue.
In response, banks can chose to run corporate banking specific campaigns that highlight value added offerings to large accounts.
2.Global banks face various regulations that restrict them in actually integrating any type of social media with their CRM system in some countries. For instance, with respect to GDPR etc. Financial institutions are also restricted from engagement online due to privacy concerns of their customers. Due to all these regulations, some banks are reluctant to use any kind of social media as part of their communications strategy.
Automated regulatory management can greatly simplify compliance.
3.Another challenge is failure to identify and justify how social media efforts result in increasing ROI is also one of the reasons why banks have not yet given serious thought to social media. Around 80% of CMOs say they have not been able to prove the business value of social media use in numbers, because they haven't been able to figure out the correct metrics to measure the success of social CRM in banks.
A social CRM can help identify key metrics important to the banks in terms of campaign ROI, CPCs, CPIs and help track the cost of sales, service etc.
The key steps of using social CRM for success is as follows:
1. Deliver instant fulfillment via social media
The best customer service is delivered to where they are. Using social media as an effective customer service platform, bankers can combine the power of digital automation to deliver complaint resolutions directly to customers fingertips. Using support models like 'follow the sun' will help bankers to cut down response times from hours to minutes.
2. Employ real time engagement
Bankers should get involved with social conversations relevant to the customer's financial needs. A social CRM can convert conversations into cases that speeds up solutions to customer needs. Real time engagement is also beneficial for greating strong traction while launching new market products. Customers can tune in and ask queries, place applications etc in real time.
3. Identify and reward brand advocates
The success of a bank depends on its ability to retain customers. Brand advocates are customer multipliers. They help banks to generate valuable goodwill that retains existing cusotmers and attract new ones. They also help to drastically lower cost of sales and service. A social CRM will help capture positive sentiment while monitoring customized social feeds. Creating and executing relevant loyalty program campaigns through cross sell models using advocates will boost engagement rates, increasing retention and conversions.
4. Be where the customers are
Customers love to check out their favorite hangouts. Banks can capture this behavioral data with a social CRM. Such intelligence will help bring the banks offer the right solutions at the right time. Thus bringing them closer to hearts and minds of the customers.
To conclude
Digital savvy customers are a key target market for banks and financial institutions. They do transactions on mobile or tablets, shares customer reviews on the Internet. Mobiles have made instant fulfillment a habit for these customers. Lack of focus will be suicidal for banking and financial services. A social CRM will thus help banks and financial services to convert social to success with the above four strategies.
