A Perfect Opportunity for Your Bank to be Exceptional
One of our mystery phone shoppers called a community bank somewhere in South Carolina a few days ago and was greeted with an automated phone message stating the following… “Thank you for calling ‘_______ Bank’ where we treat you like family.” After hearing that initial greeting we were then treated to 35 seconds of information about each option we could select for various areas of service. The automated message then informed us that all of their customer care representatives were busy at this time and asked us to hold for the next available person. Fast forward 5 minutes… we hung up. Sadly, this is a community bank that has lost its main advantage over its competitors… Remarkable customer service. Additionally, their greeting started off by saying we treat you like family. Unless they don’t really care for their family, this pretty much makes them a laughing stock and a little less than honest. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case in the community banking world. In fact, over 90% of the community banks we have shopped in the past several years perform no better than the average big bank. How can your bank avoid being one of the 90%?
Stop wasting advertising and marketing dollars
With the amount of money that community banks spend to drive in business through advertising and other marketing avenues, we always find it amazing how few are prepared to handle the call-in and walk-in business in a remarkable way. The solution for many banks is to provide more training, which may help to a degree, but will not provide a lasting solution. Real change starts at the top, which could be bank-wide or even at the branch level, by communicating non-negotiable standards and then verifying that those standards are actually being implemented. Once that’s done, you can move to standards of excellence.
Implement basic phone standards
Implement is the key word here. A training session or seminar won’t change much, if you don’t take the time to ensure this new found knowledge is actually implemented. Here are a few things every community bank should be doing on the phones.
- Answer the phone within 3 rings
- Use your name in the greeting
- Ask if the caller is a customer
- Ask for the caller’s name (and use then use it)
- Ask profiling questions in a conversational manner
- Make appropriate recommendations based on need (right customer, right product, right time)
- Offer an appointment to save the customer time (no one likes to wait in a bank lobby)
Keep your advantage
If you want to implement instead of talking about what’s needed, then let your employees know what is important. This is done by training on the standards, tracking performance, coaching to improve, and then repeating the process consistently until the standards are met and exceeded. That’s when you’ll see a shift in your culture and that’s when you can honestly claim that you treat customers like family. Assuming you like your family.
