How to Stop Losing Customers To Your Manual Appointment Scheduling Processes
In a nutshell 🥥 Manual appointment and lobby systems can frustrate customers, increase abandoned calls, and drive members to competitors. Long hold times, inefficient call handling, and limited self-service options create friction at the very first touchpoint. Modern, integrated enterprise appointment solutions streamline scheduling, reduce customer effort, and increase revenue by making it easier for customers to book appointments anytime, anywhere, setting the stage for a better overall banking experience. Key Takeaways Long hold times cost customers: 80% of callers abandon a call after being on hold for just one minute. Efficient scheduling reduces lost opportunities. Inefficient call handling adds friction: Multiple hold times and manual searches through different systems frustrate customers and increase abandonment rates. Limited channels reduce engagement: Customers expect 24/7 self-service portals, mobile booking, and online scheduling options. Failing to provide these may drive them to competitors. Integrated solutions improve experience: A unified appointment platform allows reps to schedule efficiently and customers to book independently, improving satisfaction and loyalty. Faster scheduling drives revenue: Streamlined appointment systems help branch locations capture more revenue by increasing completed appointments and account interactions. Stop Losing Customers and Members to Broken Appointment and Lobby Systems Are friction points in your manual appointment scheduling process turning away potential customers? As an appointment-driven business, in order to drive revenue into your branch locations, you rely on customers to reach out and schedule appointments with you. When this process includes too many steps, customers can be discouraged from completing their scheduling, and you may end up with the appointment equivalent of abandoned cart syndrome. When calling in to schedule an appointment, long hold times or inefficient call handling processes in your contact center could be creating friction for customers. Or, they could be frustrated from receiving no response after filling out a generic contact us form that goes to an internal mailbox that no one ever checks. Customers have come to expect it to be easy to get in touch with their bank or credit union, and scheduling an appointment is no exception. Here are some of the reasons why customers may be turning away from completing your manual appointment scheduling process and how you can remedy them. (But before we do that: Ready to discover what areas of your customer journey are damaging your customer effort score? Schedule a customer effort assessment.) 1. Lengthy Hold Time Did you know that 80% of the calls that are left on hold for over one minute drop off the line? Many appointment-driven businesses field the majority of their appointment scheduling through their contact center. If you’re dealing with high call volumes at your contact center and your appointment scheduling process is not streamlined, your reps will be accumulating a lengthy call queue. Leaving customers waiting on hold for long periods of time risks losing those customers, and especially if they are new. Poor customer service is the main reason why customers switch to a competitor, and as an appointment-driven business, you do not want your organization’s poor contact center customer experience to be the reason why your customers are retreating to your competitors. Are you aware of how many potential appointments drop off the line in your organization’s contact center due to the frustration of being left on hold? Implementing a solution such as enterprise appointment scheduling can change your manual appointment scheduling process to an efficient, more automated process. 2. Inefficient Call Handling Process According to the International Financial Corporation, the global average talk time in financial services contact centers is 4 minutes. Are the current processes in your organization allowing you to competitively offer an efficient contact center customer experience that compares to the global standard? When a customer calls into your contact center and finally gets through to the representative after waiting in the lengthy call queue, they are typically asked for their basic personal information, and what service they require. The customer is then placed on hold for the second time while the contact center representative searches through multiple platforms to find the necessary information to schedule the appointment. The advisor has to Check branch locations: The first application is typically a geolocator to find the nearest branch to the customer. Search available, qualified staff: Then the representative has to search through an extensive list of employees who work at that desired branch location, to try and find an advisor who is qualified to conduct the service that the customer requires. Check staff availability: The contact center representative reviews the calendars for the available and qualified advisors at the desired branch. During this time the customer may be growing impatient, as they have already been left on hold for a lengthy amount of time at the beginning of the process, and have now been placed on hold again! Unsure as to how long this hold will take, some customers will impatiently abandon the call at this point, instead of waiting for the advisor. The appointment scheduling process should not be so difficult. And if this simple process is so time-consuming, what does that mean for the experience they will have when they show up for their appointment? Your scheduling process should provide a positive experience to customers and start their journey with your organization off on the right foot. If this is the situation your contact center reps find themselves in, we bet your customers would greatly benefit from our integrated back-end appointment management system. Our solution will take your representatives on a more efficient appointment scheduling journey, eliminating the second hold time previously spent toggling between multiple applications. With all applications integrated into one platform, both your contact center reps and your customers will enjoy a more streamlined appointment scheduling process. 3. Limited Communication Channels According to Parature’s 2015 Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report, 90% of consumers expect their service providers to offer self-service portals. As more industries begin their transformation into the digital age, customer expectations will continue to rise. One thing that customers are starting to expect
To Buy or Build Appointment Management Software: A Guide
Build or Buy? Helpful questions to ask when trying to decide whether your organization should build a solution internally or buy a pre-existing solution.
4 New Banking Initiatives for 2020
New initiatives in banking that encompass digital transformation have allowed the customer experience and operational processes to be greatly enhanced in many financial institutions, leading to their increasing success over the first half of 2020. What can we expect from the financial services industry for the remainder of this turbulent year? Deloitte has released a 2020 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook report, highlighting some of the initiatives that FinServ organizations will be focusing on in the coming year to perpetuate their industry’s successes. We have highlighted the top four credit union and banking initiatives that we think are going to be crucial to understand and implement for the remainder of 2020. Initiative #1 – Back-End Innovation 2020 has shifted the focus around bringing back-end processes up to speed. 87% of financial organizations don’t believe their current core systems can keep pace with customer-facing initiatives. And with 60% of customer dissatisfaction originating from the back-office of financial organizations, it’s clear that inefficient back-end processes can have a negative impact on customer experience and need to be addressed in 2020. Appointment scheduling is a tool that enhances customer-facing channels, while streamlining back-end processes within your organization. It can be implemented organization-wide, into your contact center’s appointment booking process, in-branch as well as online, providing a new appointment booking channel to your customers. Initiative #2 – Better Data Management The second banking initiative encompasses better data management between customer-facing and back-end channels. If your organization utilizes platforms that do not provide integration options, you are placing your organization at an increased risk of slowing down operational processes and creating a disjointed customer experience. When you are an appointment driven organization, it is crucial that the data captured through your customer-facing channels is transmitted to your back-end processes. Implementing an enterprise appointment scheduling solution will allow your organization the ability to integrate both front and back-end processes into one platform, resulting in all customer and appointment related information being stored in one place. This will enhance operational processes and streamline the management of data between your two channels. Initiative #3 – Empower Customers Self-Service We live in an ever-evolving digital world that has streamlined many of the tasks in our day to day lives, such as checking out at the grocery store, buying clothes, and ordering food. With all of these advancements, shouldn’t financial organizations be providing self-service channels to their customers as well? The increase in customer experience expectations does not mean that customers expect to have your organization wait on them hand and foot. Independence and autonomy are very important and according to a survey conducted by GetApp, 70% of customers prefer to use self-service channels to manage their lives, and 31% said that they would leave a current provider if another offered online accessibility. With appointment scheduling, you can provide your customers with the luxury of scheduling appointments with your organization through self-serve, online channels, allowing them to connect with your organization whenever and wherever they want. Initiative #4 – Revitalizing the Lobby Experience To match the continuously changing landscape of 2020, it is important to adhere to the customer’s continuously changing needs when they decide to make their selective trips into the branch. Customers now more than ever require a clear line of sight into the lobby experience, whether it’s accurate wait times on when they can meet with an advisor, or seeing how many people are actually inside of the branch. With Lobby Management, your customers get to center the banking experience around their own needs, providing accurate branch information while prioritizing the customers physical safety inside of the branch. New Initiatives in Banking – What’s Next? According to Deloitte’s 2020 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook report, “Banking consumers have a stronger emotional connection to technology brands like Apple, Amazon, and Google than to their banks.” And in response, many banks are deploying digital strategies to stay ahead of the game. Does your organization have a game plan for the rest of 2020 to keep up with the digital transformation occurring in the financial services industry? Take advantage of the latest trends, and what Coconut can do to help in our Digital Transformation Guide. Ready to get started? Schedule a consultation today.
The Branch is Convenient, But Customers Want More
Despite the ongoing shift toward digital services and distancing banking, the branch is far from dead. That said, customers are increasingly expecting a seamless experience when switching between the convenient digital tools they use every day and the branch environment they trust for their most important financial matters.
Simplified Scheduling: Future Proof Branch Strategies
Innovative technologies and new digital tools are bringing massive changes to the retail banking landscape, and nowhere is this more visible than in the brick and mortar channel. But these changes don’t mean that the branch is becoming irrelevant. Even with the reduction in branch traffic and increase in mobile and self service solutions, customers still want to be able to sit down with a financial professional when making big decisions. And with millennials and Gen X ranking convenient branches as their primary consideration when selecting their financial institution, that’s not likely to change any time soon. What does need to change is the idea that they will continue sitting on hold, standing in a queue or waiting in an outdated lobby to meet with a teller or advisor at that branch. As a follow up to Part 4 in our series, today we will be examining the final of 5 different strategies that banks and credit unions can implement in order to set their branches up for success in this rapidly changing landscape. Simplify Appointment Booking If branches are going to remain relevant in the years ahead, it is vital for them to make it as easy as possible for customers to schedule a visit. Over 80% of a retail banking customer’s interactions take place through self service channels, and 67% of consumers prefer self-service over speaking with a live representative. This means that people are visiting branches less frequently, but when they do it’s for high-value face-to-face consultations. No amount of in-branch technology or improvements is going to eliminate the friction caused when they visit a location to discover that nobody can see them at that time. With a unified, self-service scheduling platform for all channels, financial institutions can streamline the appointment booking process across every customer touchpoint. Whether an appointment comes through via your website, mobile app, or even your social platform, customers should be able to book that meeting as quickly as easily as possible. With this in place, financial institutions can effectively remove the guesswork from the task of improving efficiencies in the booking process. This can not only provide the benefit of increasing the number of high-value appointments driven to your branch locations, but also enable better optimization of employee schedules to improve their overall efficiency. This is especially important considering that the branch is all about the people in it and their ability to serve customers. Tellers need to be available throughout the day, but in greater numbers for peak transaction times like lunch hours and Friday mornings. Universal bankers should be able to shift from service activities to sales activities like outbound calling when there is less branch traffic to deal with. Training and branch meetings can be scheduled to minimize impact on branch operations. With better management around staff schedules, customers can be better serviced, leading to further increases in the value of their appointments. What Comes After a Booked Appointment? Important to keep in mind is that self-service can’t stop after the meeting has been scheduled. As with any appointment, life happens and schedules change. Without a simple self-service method for making adjustments to their appointment, customers who have taken advantage of your self-service channel to create their booking are at higher risk for becoming no-shows. Likewise, providing more self-service channels through reminder messages and instant check-in can help to further improve the effectiveness of your self-service solution. 1. Rescheduling Most scheduling solutions provide a method for rescheduling via email, but with 9 in 10 consumers saying that they would like businesses to provide SMS text messaging options for communicating with them, and 52% saying that they would prefer texting customer support over their current method of communication, it’s becoming vital to include this channel as well. 2. Reminders Along with the initial message providing instructions on how to reschedule, text messages also allow for faster and more effective communication when it comes to reminder messages. In fact, SMS open rates are as high as 98%, compared to just 20% of all emails. And, on average, it takes 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text, opposed to 90 minutes for an email. Many companies have already begun providing appointment reminders via text message, with 51% of millennials saying that they are already receiving them. When asked why they enjoy text messages over other reminders, these millennial customers say it is because they’re “an effective way to be reminded on their own time” (60%), “one less thing to have to remember” (57%) and “the most convenient way to be reminded” (55%). Of course, with 51% saying that they are receiving them, that means that 49% of companies are still missing out on this opportunity to increase convenience and decrease no-shows. If these are things your organization is interested in (and they should be), it’s time to get started. 3. Check-in Beyond all the scheduling and rescheduling issues, text messages can take things even further by allowing for a simple method for customers to let staff know that they have arrived for their meeting. Rather than having customers wait to speak with someone to let them know they’ve arrived, providing them with the option to check in via text can help to streamline the process and allow for a more personal approach. A simple message sent out 10 minutes prior to the meeting that instructs them to reply ‘1’ to check-in when they have arrived opens a channel of direct communication between them and the staff member they are there to speak with. This allows staff to come out and greet them personally, setting the meeting up for greater success. Check out the other articles in the Future Proof Branch Strategies Series: PART ONE – Self Service Kiosks Examining the benefits and capabilities that self service kiosks can bring to your branch by eliminating many of the pain points that customers associate with their visit. PART TWO – Café Style Branches We discuss design changes in the lobby that
3 Digital Banking Initiatives to Increase Branch Traffic
Streamline workflows, boost loyalty, and increase productivity. Discover how appointment management solutions eliminate operational inefficiencies.
Remote Video Banking: Future Proof Branch Strategies
Photo Credit: https://writix.co.uk/ Deploying a digital-first banking platform is not only now possible, but mandatory for financial institutions of all sizes — but this doesn’t mean getting rid of physical locations altogether. 77% of customers still prefer visiting the branch when they want to discuss complex financial topics, and even for digital banking customers, speaking with a live representative still evokes the greatest amount of positive sentiment. Finding that perfect balance between digital and human services is the key to establishing a future proof branch. As a follow up to Part 3 in our series, today we will be examining the 4th of 5 different strategies that banks and credit unions can implement in order to set their branches up for success in this rapidly changing landscape. Introduce Remote Video Banking Video banking has been popular for years now, with many banks having installed ITMs — interactive teller machines — for their drive-up and in-branch kiosks. A number of financial institutions have been successful with this technology, but technology has evolved, and consumer habits with it. Today, millions of people are making video calls through FaceTime and Skype every day, video conferencing in the office is commonplace, and telecommuting is on the rise. With remote video calling becoming so mainstream, customers are beginning to question the need for a branch visit in order to engage with a banking assistant. The expectation that their financial institution extend the same capabilities that they enjoy everyday in communicating with their friends and colleagues to things like mortgage applications and investment consultations is on the rise. “We recognize that [SMB customers] work unconventional hours, are traveling or might not be able to visit a branch for a number of other reasons. Being able to access RBC Small Business specialists via video wherever and whenever they want helps them maintain that personal connection they expect with our bank.” Cathy HonorSVP Contact Centers, Royal Bank of Canada Currently, most remote video offerings like those of RBC are created for specific use cases — with RBC it’s SMB clients, while others like Barclay’s provide limited retail banking services. In these early stages, these constraints to service levels work to streamline implementation as specialized representatives are able to serve customers from central video contact centers. However, if remote video banking is to be extended to more services in the future, it should also be extended to include the branch itself. Along with allowing branches to leverage the talented and experienced staff they already employ, it would allow customers the option to engage in a video engagement with a local representative that they know and trust. This not only plays to the strengths of the branch in providing expert face-to-face financial advice, but also fits with what customers are expecting from digital services. According to research from Kony Inc, although 57% of customers want all products, services and support to be available digitally, they want those digital offerings to be supported by a named company representative. Customers want digital, but they also want the trust, security and relationship that comes from physical services. This means combining physical and digital services rather than separating them into two divergent channels — the branch and the video contact center should be working to support each other. Are Customers Ready? According to a recent study, the future of video banking looks bright, with the vast majority of consumers who try it rating the experience highly. Somewhat surprisingly, consumers who have used in-branch video banking rate their satisfaction with the service slightly higher than those using video services remotely. A difference that could be the result of remote video banking customers having to navigate the system on their own. The study also found that it is inaccurate to assume that younger, more upscale customers are the most likely to accept video banking. In their research, it was found that all consumers, regardless of age, gender or socioeconomic status, are generally open to trying video banking if/when their bank or credit union asks them. The fact is that as branches continue to shrink, customers are still going to want to get face time with skilled advisors. The numbers show that 50% of US financial customers are willing to try online banking if their bank offers it, and as illustrated previously, they are generally quite accepting of the technology once they’ve experienced it for themselves. With this in mind, a branch looking toward the future would do well to begin bringing video banking capabilities into their locations today. Doing so will not only enable them to differentiate themselves from the competition today, but to provide both themselves and their customers with a head start on the larger remote video banking transition that is almost sure to happen in the future. Check out the other articles in the Future Proof Branch Strategies Series: PART ONE – Self Service Kiosks Examining the benefits and capabilities that self service kiosks can bring to your branch by eliminating many of the pain points that customers associate with their visit. PART TWO – Café Style Branches We discuss design changes in the lobby that can help to encourage relationship building and conversations between advisors and their customers. PART THREE – Smart ATMs Exploring the changes that are being introduced through new Smart ATMs and where that may take us — and the frontline staff that many fear they replace — in the years ahead. What Next? Looking for more strategies to meet your customers’ changing expectations around the in-branch experience? Download the full report Becoming Future Proof: Five Proven Strategies for the Branches of the Future to learn more methods in technology, design, and service that branches can take advantage of to adapt in the rapidly changing financial landscape. Interested to hear what top experts in financial customer experience have to say about the coming challenges branches are looking forward to? Watch our panel discussion Embracing a Customer-First Mindset: Eliminate Friction Points in Your Customer Multi-Channel Journey. Ready to start taking
Smart ATMs: Future Proof Branch Strategies
While branches remain important, their role is changing. Customers are increasingly comfortable taking advantage of online and mobile channels, leading to lower branch traffic and fewer teller transactions. As more clients use digital channels to deposit checks, transfer funds and manage their accounts, banks and credit unions must continue to move away from their transactional focus and adapt to meet the expectations of the evolving relationship that customers have with their branch. As a follow up to Part 2 in our series, today we will be examining the 3rd of 5 different strategies that banks and credit unions can implement in order to set their branches up for success in this rapidly changing landscape. 5 Proven Strategies for the Branches of the Future Upgrade to Smart ATMs Introduced back in 1969, the ATM once again has the power to bring about a major shift in banking. Originally designed to perform withdrawals, they’ve evolved over the years to handle new routine tasks like balance inquiries, transfers and deposits, but they are long overdue for a more serious upgrade. In today’s self-service oriented world, ATMs are expected to be effectively entire branches contained within a single box. “As the ATM turns 50, some people may think that it’s reaching the end of the road – they’re wrong. In fact, the future of the ATM is bright in this shifting financial landscape, especially as the technology behind them continues to evolve and offer new services to customers… A combination of self-service machines and staff could be the ticket to reviving a dwindling supply of bank branches” Mark AldredBanking Technology Expert, Auriga The financial services industry is evolving faster than ever before, and digital focused millennials and Gen Zs expect the technology involved in managing their money to match trends seen in other industries — and that includes the ATM. Even with the fast-growing adoption of digital channels, the ATM remains a primary interface between customers and their banks for one simple reason: they’re convenient. By extending that convenience to additional actions like account openings, bill payments, mobile phone top-ups, currency exchange, and more, tellers in the branch will have more time to work with customers on complex banking needs. The Historic Precedent One of the biggest arguments against smart ATMs is the same one that people put forward in the mid-1990s when today’s standard ATMs were brought in in large numbers. Everybody assumed – including many bank managers — that this was going to eliminate jobs for tellers. It didn’t. In fact, since 2000, teller jobs have increased substantially. So how could a machine that was designed to perform many teller services provide a boost in positions for tellers? By making it cheaper to operate a branch. Where the average branch previously required around 21 tellers, with ATM machines that number was reduced to 13. So suddenly you are able to open a smaller branch, with fewer employees, leading to more branches, which required more tellers. So the 400,000+ labor saving ATMs currently installed at branches across the United States are directly responsible for creating more jobs and allowing banks to expand their operations, while simultaneously allowing tellers to provide a higher level of customer service. “What happened is that cash-handling obviously became less important for tellers. But their ability to market and their interpersonal skills in terms of dealing with bank clients became more important. So what the ATM machine did was effectively change the job of the bank teller… They became part of what banks call the customer relationship team.” James BessenAuthor, Learning by Doing With this in mind, the world today is not the world of the 1990s. In 2020, our lives have been inundated with convenient self-service options. In fact, 67% of consumers now prefer these options over speaking with a live representative. This shift is reflected in the fact that 90% of ATM machines shipping globally are newer, smarter models that are being sent to replace existing ATMs in order to meet rising expectations in terms of performance and convenience. These new ATMs provide contactless transactions, mobile pre-staging, and financial institution “branch-in-a-box” capabilities, delivering up to 90% of branch-based technology and services. Large monolithic branches have already become a remnant of the past, and smart ATMs will allow branches to have an even smaller footprint. By providing a self-service option for these transactional services, we could very well see a surge in branch numbers similar to the one experienced during the mid-1990s as more smaller branches with lower staffing requirements become the mainstream. And while it’s been forecast that teller positions will likely decrease as smart ATMs gain popularity, the decline is forecast at just 8% — hardly an industry killing technology. Instead, these machines should be viewed as complementary to the human role, and a tool for creating increased demand and efficiency while enabling staff to concentrate on building stronger human relationships. Conclusion The truth is, there is no benefit to having the many of the transactional processes that can be performed by smart ATMs to be handled through face-to-face interactions. Relationships are not built through these engagements, and convenience is not enhanced by them. And these two factors should be the primary goals for a future focused branch. For the few customers who simply prefer to perform these actions through a teller? They still have that capability. What’s more, if the lobby has been upgraded as discussed in the previous strategy, now they can do it while sitting in a comfortable lounge, speaking to a teller that comes to them. When you future proof your branch, everybody wins. Check out the other articles in the Future Proof Branch Strategies Series: PART ONE – Self Service Kiosks Examining the benefits and capabilities that self service kiosks can bring to your branch by eliminating many of the pain points that customers associate with their visit. PART TWO – Café Style Branches We discuss design changes in the lobby that can help to encourage relationship building and conversations
Café Branches: Future Proof Branch Strategies
Bringing self-service to the lobby is a sure-fire way to set branches up for success. Discover the second strategy to future proof your branches.
Self Service Kiosks: Future Proof Branch Strategies
The financial services industry exists in a rapidly changing environment fueled by evolving client preferences and emerging technologies. The growth and opportunity these changes are capable of bringing can be incredibly exciting, but what about the human side of finance? With so much technology disrupting the market, is the physical branch going to remain relevant in the coming years? The simple answer is, yes. But a more complicated response would have to explore the fact that while the branch will certainly remain relevant, it will have to evolve to do so. And so, in this series, we will be examining 5 different strategies that banks and credit unions can implement in order to set their branches up for success in this rapidly changing landscape. 5 Proven Strategies to Future Proof Your Branches Get the Full Report Introducing Self-Service Kiosks As the first touchpoint for any customer entering your branch, upgrades to the lobby should be a top priority when seeking to future proof the physical banking experience. While some companies have gone for a complete technological overhaul as seen in China Construction Bank’s or Bank of America’s robot-run branches, the majority of these upgrades involve bringing in technology to supplement the human experience, rather than replace it. And looking at human behavior, it appears that this relationship-centric approach to technology is more likely to lead to long-term success. “Digital technology and new forms of automated service offer many exciting opportunities for financial services to become more tailored and convenient. But there will always be a role for face-to-face service when it comes to banking. Money issues are complex and emotive. Customers like to talk through what it all means with a real human being.” Paul RiseboroughChief Commercial Officer, Metro Bank So how can you find that happy medium between technology and face-to-face human services? By far, the most efficient method is through replacing or augmenting the standard greeting desk with self-service kiosks. Through this relatively simple investment, customers are able to skip the queue and get face time with staff quickly, creating a streamlined lobby that’s more inviting to your customers. They also provide the added benefit of reducing labor costs and position your brand as technologically advanced, while allowing management to track and measure operations metrics across branch locations, providing them with the information they need to make more informed decisions and improve the experience even further. And perhaps most importantly, this forward-looking strategy shifts the focus of branch employees from answering routine questions and booking appointments to making sales as they are given more time to engage in higher quality conversations with customers about their financial goals. Which is, of course, the main reason that customers come to the branch in the first place. In fact, 77% of customers prefer visiting the branch when they want to discuss complex financial topics, and stick to digital for quick transactions, such as withdrawing cash or transferring funds. So it’s clear that there is a huge demand for strong personalized advice. This is highlighted even further with statistics on the primary pain points most likely to prompt switching banks: unprepared banking associates (68%), long wait times (55%), impersonal service (49%), and the unavailability of specialists (43%). Branches are vital in providing customers with the personalized service that they crave, and they want to receive that personalized service through face-to-face meetings. At the same time, they are more than happy to take advantage of a technology based self-service solution if it can smooth the process of getting in front of an advisor. In fact, the same study mentioned above showed that having an advisor who could greet them by name and be prepared for their arrival (62%), allowing customers to check-in or compare wait times at local branches via a mobile app (55%), and interactive touchscreen displays to explore products and get advice while waiting (53%) were among the top solutions that these customers are interested in to improve the branch experience. By implementing a lobby management kiosk that puts relevant customer information at the fingertips of frontline staff, eliminates long queues and uncertain wait times, and ensures that customers are matched with the appropriate advisor every time, the bank branch of the future can deliver on many of its key strengths while addressing many of the common pain points in the branch experience to drive continued success in an increasingly digital world. “There has been much debate around whether the branch is ‘dead’: this is an interesting theoretical discussion, but it has little bearing on reality. Just as the rise of new technology has threatened the branch in the past few years, it also holds the key to their continued relevance. By implementing the right solutions, a bank can ensure that its branches are cost-effective and play their role in offering excellent customer experience.” Lawrence FreebornSenior Research Analyst, IDC Financial Insights Check out PART TWO of this series, where we discuss design changes in the lobby that can help to encourage relationship building and conversations between advisors and their customers. What Next? Looking for more strategies to meet your customers’ changing expectations around the in-branch experience? Download the full report Becoming Future Proof: Five Proven Strategies for the Branches of the Future to learn more methods in technology, design, and service that branches can take advantage of to adapt in the rapidly changing financial landscape. Interested to hear what top experts in financial customer experience have to say about the coming challenges branches are looking forward to? Watch our panel discussion Embracing a Customer-First Mindset: Eliminate Friction Points in Your Customer Multi-Channel Journey Ready to start taking steps to ensure your branch is set up to meet your customer’s evolving expectations head on? Schedule a consultation with Coconut Software to learn more about how our tailored solutions can help.
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Manage the Walk-In Appointment Journey
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How to Instantly Increase Revenue Generating Appointments with Calls-to-Action
As a marketer at a financial institution, creating revenue generating appointments to fill your pipeline is a key part of the job. More and more, you’ve observed that your customers are looking to connect with your organization online, through a number of channels–mobile app, website, — and scheduling appointments is no exception. Customer behavior has evolved, and it’s time to digitally transform the appointment scheduling process and optimizing your calls-to-action is a great place to start. The Definition of a Call-To-Action In short, a call-to-action is a “next step” that you would like your customer or prospect to take that leads them closer to the final destination: making a purchase. Often paired with a link, it includes a short, powerful message to incite a reader, prospect or website visitor to complete an action. How Calls-to-Action Impact the Sales Funnel For financial services organizations, new business is typically generated through an in-person interaction between an advisor and the customer, therefore appointment CTAs are an obvious entry point to your sales funnel. It’s important to optimize your CTAs with persuasive messaging and intuitive, actionable prompts that are available wherever your customers are contemplating taking that next step: on your website, landing pages and in your email marketing, for example. And it’s crucial that you make this step, and the steps following it as effortless as possible. Increasing Click-Through-Rate Hubspot found that conversion rates increased by almost half when they streamlined the number of steps it took to complete the action. Here are some common CTAs with lengthy completion steps that could cause your prospects to lose patience, abandon the action and drop out of the sales funnel: CTAs that read “Call XXX-XXX-XXXX to schedule an appointment,” that direct customers to a contact center to complete the action. Providing generic ‘Contact Us’ form to request an appointment without a rigorous follow-up process, or timely response. Service or need specific actions either don’t exist or require your prospect to search branch websites in order to identify locations that meet their needs. Removing friction in the appointment scheduling journey will help reduce leaks in your funnel AND improve customer experience. Below are the 3 steps to implementing calls-to-actions that drive revenue instantly. Step 1: Eliminate Friction and Implement an “Always-on”, Self-serve, Appointment Scheduling Tool. If you’re looking to optimize appointment generation through your website and other digital channels, implementing a self-serve solution is one of the best shortcuts to capturing more appointments. Time and convenience are highly valued by customers, a study by Forrester found that 72% of customers prefer to use self-service rather than phone or email support. Implementing a self-serve appointment scheduling channel is a great way to simplify the customer appointment scheduling experience while enabling you to gather valuable marketing data to help better plan future campaigns. Self-serve appointment scheduling provides customers with the ability to independently schedule an appointment online, allowing them to choose the time and location they desire and informing them immediately that their appointment has been scheduled. With 64% of consumers saying that they expect companies to respond to them in real-time, this helps eliminate the tumultuous task of manually scheduling appointments and saves both employee and customer time. We’ve also observed that our clients’ customers are reaching out to connect 24/7 through online channels, expecting responses in real-time and often, after-business hours. And in fact, we found that after implementing an always-on self-serve channel for our customers, an average of 41% appointments were scheduled between 5pm and 9am. That’s almost half of an organization’s overall number of scheduled appointments that never would have been captured, had it not been for this channel! Not only will implementing a self-serve channel help drive leads, but new customers will start their journey with a better perception of your brand. This provides a better foundation to build a relationship and can help with customer retention further down the line. Step 2: Track & Measure Call-to-Action Conversion Rate. Once you’ve implemented a self-serve appointment scheduling channel and are driving prospects to schedule an appointments online, the next step is to begin tracking the performance of your CTAs and landing pages so that you can further optimize. A conversion rate is commonly referred to as “the percentage of users who complete a desired action.” In order to get a full picture of your website CTA conversion rate though, here are a few key metrics to be tracking to identify low hanging fruit and areas of optimization: Landing page traffic: How many visitors are coming to the landing page? Landing page bounce rate: How many visitors aren’t finding what they need on the landing page? CTA actions completed: How many customers completed an appointment scheduling from that particular landing page? This can be tracked by landing page, service, the specific text that instructs what action to be taken, to name a few. What’s a good conversion rate? Across industries, the average landing page conversion rate was 2.35%, yet the top 25% are converting at 5.31% or higher. The better the conversion rate, the better the results. Step 3: Optimize CTA Performance with A/B Testing. To further optimize CTA conversion rate, there are a number of variables you can experiment with, from landing page layout, headline, CTA language, text or button color and other design elements. Making ongoing improvements to your landing pages and calls-to-action, optimizing performance, can make a difference to your bottom line. Whatever your CTA performance today, though, there’s always room for improvement. Tracking, testing, tweaking these variables is how you can optimize CTAs. Ask yourself these questions: Could the wording of our CTAs be clearer? How strong is our value proposition? How is the CTA sized in proportion to the rest of the page? Does the CTA blend into the background of the rest of the page? Does the CTA look clickable? Is the CTA connected to the customer need at this stage of the buyer’s journey? In the next blog post in this series we’ll dig deeper into how