These days, people have more options than ever before when it comes to banking.
Picture this: you own a financial institution in a small town, where just a handful of years ago, it was the only choice that the residents had when it came to banking.
But that’s no longer the case.
The majority of banking transactions that most people use every day, like opening a new account, transferring money, and paying bills can be done online through a computer or mobile device. This means that the small town bank no longer has the same hold on the residents like it did before.
People have choices.
If you’re not providing the customer service experience they expect, they don’t give a second thought to packing it up and leaving for greener pastures.
Finance is an old industry, but that doesn’t mean it’s been resistant to modern processes.
Technologies like blockchain, chatbots, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have become the norm in the financial services industry, as these technologies increase security, free up hundreds of hours of work time, and overall help provide a better customer experience.
But a banking CRM is like the core behind all of these technologies,
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, which is arguably the most important factor of business success for the financial services industry (aside from being able to manage someone’s money properly, of course).
Customers are increasingly expecting more personalized experiences, and the financial industry isn’t immune to that fact. Banks need to be able to show their customers that they can answer their personal financial questions, provide tailored solutions, and overall just showcase a complete understanding of their unique financial needs.
And the above holds true whether it’s a consumer banking customer or a business banking customer: seamless and personalized experiences are expected and extremely important for winning new customers and retaining existing ones.
A CRM in banking can help you provide that tailored experience your customers expect, while at the same time making your life easier by automating processes and making data easy to manage and access, while still maintaining a level of high security.
Considering that a CRM is among the top three tools for creating personalized customer interactions, leading to increased customer loyalty and marketing ROI, it’s no wonder that the financial industry is adopting CRM usage faster than ever before.
It doesn’t matter if your bank is large or small, it can benefit from using a CRM.
If you want to be able to better understand your customers, have secure access to useful data, and create the best experience possible for your customers, then take a look at these five key benefits of a banking CRM:
Being able to reach customers effectively at every stage in their financial life is paramount to delivering great customer service.
With a banking CRM, financial professionals can segment customers into categories based on pretty much any type of criteria, such as age, location, financial status, and more, allowing more personalized communication while still being able to reach more customers at a time.
It’s also no secret that mobile banking is the preferred way of managing personal and business finances for many. With 57 million Americans using mobile banking, it makes sense to embrace mobile alongside customers.
A CRM can help you deliver that mobile experience that your customers expect. From opening accounts to receiving real-time financial advice and help, a CRM transforms your digital customer service experience.
While a steady stream of new customers coming in is great, retaining existing customers is also key to maintaining a steady business. Continually showing your customers a consistent and productive experience can only do good things for your financial institution.
A banking CRM allows every department to access the same customer information, keeping everyone on the same page and facilitating a consistent flow of communication between different departments.
For example, if a customer service rep recommends that a customer open a specific type of account, a salesperson would be able to see this information and follow up on it as necessary.
You can’t provide a great customer experience every time if there are inconsistencies with how your employees handle customers. A banking CRM allows you to track employee performance across all departments, and use that information to set standards of service.
Ringy, for instance, includes a feature where a manager can listen to a call without disturbing the employee and customer’s conversation. If the employee needs guidance on how to handle a question or concern, the manager can verbally give the employee information without the customer hearing it.
Administrative tasks take up a large chunk of employee time. A banking CRM can automate certain tasks to remove some of this administrative burden from employees.
For instance, let’s say a customer changed their email address in their mobile banking app. The CRM banking could be set to ensure that the new email address is updated everywhere where it appears, including the customer’s internal account views.
Another way that process automation can be useful is through marketing automation. Emails and SMS communications can be set to automatically be sent to customers when they complete certain actions.
For example, if a customer clicks on a link in their mobile banking app about applying for a business credit card but then closes the app a short time later, an automated email can be triggered to be sent to them offering more information about the credit card.
Effectively managing leads can be a big challenge for banks large and small. Incoming leads need to be correctly prioritized, qualified and sent to sales reps for follow-up.
A bank CRM makes lead capturing easier by gathering leads from all sources, such as social media, website, email, and search, and automatically categorizing those leads based on the criteria you set.
One of the ways you can categorize leads is by interest, such as general interest in banking services or products, prior engagements with the bank, or business accounts.
It’s clear that banking CRM software is a given for any size financial institution. While a banking CRM is a great tool out of the box, there are certain things you can do to make sure that your data stays clean and that you get every benefit possible from the CRM.
Here are several tips on how to maximize the effectiveness of your banking CRM:
Many CRMs can be integrated with third-party software to increase functionality. In some cases, you can even integrate your banking CRM software with industry tools such as eMoney and Riskalyze, which alongside tools like Google Calendar, Gmail, and Outlook can quickly stack up to provide the functionality to your CRM that you didn’t think was possible.
Ringy comes with the ability to integrate with Google Calendar and Facebook immediately. Ringy can also integrate with Zapier to open the CRM up to further integration with hundreds of other pieces of software.
Obviously, in the banking industry, privacy and security are extremely important. Customers should feel confident that they have their sensitive information secured and protected.
Thankfully, most banking CRMs provide essential security features, such as:
Role level access allows you to control who can view what data, depending on their role within the company. Using this feature is important to reduce the number of eyes that see certain information, which allows you to both keep better track of who had access to what in the case of a data breach and control the likelihood of potential data breaches.
User activity logs are a great way to keep track of the movement in and out of customer accounts and allow you to quickly identify actions that need to be looked into. It’s also great for training new employees or fixing errors.
Compliance with data privacy regulations is paramount to a secure banking CRM. Most modern CRMs are in compliance with GLBA (United States) and GDPR (Europe).
Most banking CRMs, Ringy included, provide reporting and analytics so you can easily gather information about your employees’ performance, customer activity, and more to provide context to your business’s performance.
You can then use this information to adjust processes, determine KPIs, and identify opportunities to improve your business.
Upselling is when you offer another product or service that adds value in some way to a customer’s existing purchase. One way to do this is to look at purchase history in your banking CRM to determine if there are complementary products or services that a customer could benefit from.
Not only does upselling increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per Customer), it’s also good customer service to offer additional beneficial products that the customer may not have been aware of before.
Keeping customer information accurate and up to date in your banking CRM is extremely important. Duplicate and disconnected customer data lead to problems all throughout your sales pipeline, from marketing to sales to customer service.
Ensuring that reps from all departments take the time to accurately enter customer information goes a long way in keeping your data clean. There are also third-party applications and software solutions that you can add to your CRM to help keep customer data accurate, many of which can be found through Zapier.
When you’re choosing a banking CRM, you should keep in mind what key outcomes you are looking for once the CRM is implemented, everyone is onboarded, and your data is 100% integrated into the CRM.
These key outcomes could include financial and productivity gains, such as:
Once you determine your key outcomes, you’re better prepared to choose a CRM that can help you meet those expectations. But there are so many options out there, it can be difficult to narrow down your choices.
Not to worry, we’ve got you covered.
The next section summarizes our top picks for the best banking CRM software available today.
To start off with, let’s go through the criteria we’re using to choose our top bank CRM picks. We’re looking at things like:
With these factors in mind, let’s take a look at our choices for top banking CRM software:
Yeah, we’re recommending Ringy as one of our top choices. Ringy is an excellent entry-level CRM with unmatched customer support. Our CRM also provides specific features that are tailored to finance professionals.
Features
Pricing
*Pricing as of November 2023
Creatio is a straightforward CRM with sales, marketing, and service hubs (sold separately from each other).
Features
Pricing
*Pricing as of November 2021
Engagebay offers a well-rounded and affordable banking CRM software solution. Sales, marketing, and service features are sold separately as “bays” or available as an all-in-one package.
Features
Pricing
*Pricing as of November 2021
Investglass is a CRM made for the finance, healthcare, and insurance industries. The software includes a variety of templates that you can use to customize your user interface to meet your needs.
Features
Pricing
*Pricing as of November 2021
If you need comprehensive scheduling for your team, Monday.com is a great choice. While Monday is a project management software at heart, The CRM template offers enough options to satisfy most user needs.
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Pricing
*Pricing as of November 2021
Zendesk sell is a sales-focused CRM that is designed to enhance productivity for sales teams within any industry, including financial services.
Features
*Pricing as of November 2021
If you work in the financial services industry and want to provide tailored and personalized customer experiences, investing in a Banking CRM is a necessity.
These days, customers expect you to completely understand their pain points, needs and wants with every interaction they have with you and your company.
A CRM for banks allows you and your employees to have immediate access to all communications and data that your company has gathered from that customer so reps can be completely prepared for every interaction, every time.
Ringy is a great banking CRM that has all the features financial professionals need to keep their customers happy and well looked after.
Ready to get started? Book a demo with us today and we’ll walk you through our software.