CRM Finance Features - Global Vision Technology Blog

1. It can help ramp up customer service.

A primary benefit of CRM Finance is the ability for both sides to engage in a new kind of dialogue: with social media, customers can take to online platforms to vent, query and converse with their financial service providers. Businesses can then use the same platforms to undertake reactive customer service.

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Meeting their expectations is just the start, exceeding them can reap huge rewards for businesses. Above is a graph Brandwatch put together, to show the different topics of tweets that customers direct at banks in the UK. Seeking better customer service is clearly the dominant reason people direct tweets at banks.

Furthermore, moving customer support online and away from call centers and into cyberspace can save the companies money, time and resources. It costs around $3-4 to respond to a query through social media and ten times more to do the same by phone.

There is value in the ease and speed that comes with conducting customer support via a channel like Twitter, like Bank of America is doing. Consider that 61% of customer loss is due to long holds when contacting customer service, and that 32% of financial services customers switched providers in the past year.

2. For prevention: Reach clients…before they complain

Reactive customer service may be the logical next step for call centers, but the possibilities available through Social CRM are even greater than that.

Financial service companies can use monitoring tools in order to find complaints and other mentions from all over the web, not just on owned accounts. Scouring the web with CRM Finance means that businesses can find specific conversation about their services and products, whether a Facebook status, a forum post or even a comment on a news site or blog. Employees can then isolate these mentions and respond to them accordingly, currying favor with prospects, customers and influencers.

By making customer service a proactive activity, brands can boost their reputation and even their revenue, through less customer churn, good word-of-mouth for referrals and through acknowledging and addressing problems before they reach the complaint stage.

3. It can build communities around your brand.

Some financial service companies have pioneered the implementation of their own communities of customers. A great example of this is First Direct, a UK arm of global bank HSBC, who are notorious for excellent use of social media. They topped Brandwatch’s report into retail banking on Twitter, and after experimenting with their own platform, Talking Point, they now trust Facebook to provide a hub for their community. Customers exchange advice and feedback with First Direct and with each other, fostering a strong relationship between customers, peers and brand by using CRM Finance.