3 Ways to Reduce Bank Appointment Pain Points
The top 3 appointment pain points and how to reduce them in order to help staff deliver better appointments and be more productive.
6 Steps to a Successful Technology Implementation Process
What can you do to ensure a smooth technology implementation process? Coconut Software has the 6 best steps to ensure a successful implementation.
The Top Retail Banking Trends for 2025: Report
Economic factors, regulatory shifts, and fierce competition from digital-first fintechs continue to make the banking sector difficult to navigate in terms of earning and retaining customers. But while many traditional players struggle to adapt, the banks that lean into technology, AI enhancements, optimal omnichannel customer experiences, and branch staff optimization are poised for sustainable growth. Coconut Software’s 2025 Top Retail Banking Trends Report outlines all of the above, and more.
The 5 Hidden Business Impacts of Bank Appointment Scheduling Software
During a recent visit to New Orleans, I had the privilege of engaging with customers and industry experts, and digging into their pain points when it comes to truly enhancing their customers’ experiences, and their branch productivity. As it turns out: There was a lot of pain there. One recurring problem statement that arose in conversation was how bank branches can evolve from being solely transactional hubs into full-featured advisory centers. It’s not surprising: The need for today’s financial institutions to drive intentional, high-value interactions between customers and advisors is more pressing than ever. What was surprising in these discussions was the widespread gap in understanding that the solution to this transformation is possible and—indeed—already exists: Appointment scheduling software and lobby management, which, beyond streamlining operations, offers profound benefits. I’d like to fill the knowledge gap on just a few of those benefits right now. Benefit #1. Make invisible data visible to drive operational change. In the quest to transition branches into advisory-centric spaces, understanding how advisors allocate their time is paramount. Without a robust system to monitor activities, banks operate in the dark, making it challenging to meet performance metrics and address customer needs effectively. Implementing comprehensive appointment scheduling systems provide true clarity on the entire customer journey—from more simple account openings, to complex services like mortgage consultations. They answer burning questions from banks like: Did the customer attend their appointment? What prompted their visit? Have they interacted with other departments previously? Data-driven answers to these huge questions give the granular insight needed to truly understand—and powerfully serve—your customers on their preferred channels. For banks, in both the short and long term, translates to higher retention rates and increased referral business. Benefit #2. Uplift your advisors by harmonizing demand and supply. Once we grasp customer demand patterns, the next step is aligning them with advisor availability. Advisors possess a finite inventory of time; optimizing it is crucial for effective workforce planning—and serving customers more seamlessly. By analyzing appointment data, banks can identify peak times for specific services and adjust staffing accordingly. This proactive approach ensures that customers receive timely, personalized service, enhancing their overall experience. Simultaneously, advisors benefit from a balanced workload, leading to increased job satisfaction. The dual outcomes are compelling: improved Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and heightened advisor satisfaction. In an era where banking executives face the challenge of achieving more with fewer resources, such optimization is invaluable. Benefit #3. Connect customers with the advisors that can *actually* help. Customers expect immediate access to services tailored to their needs. However, it’s impractical for banks to station specialists for every service at every branch. The solution lies in intelligent routing—connecting customers to the appropriate advisor, at the right time, through their preferred channel. “At Coconut, we’re pioneering solutions to enhance real-time accessibility across branches. By leveraging technology, we can route customers to advisors based on expertise and availability, ensuring efficient and effective service delivery.” This approach not only meets customer expectations, but also optimizes efficiency in banks and credit unions. As more routine transactions migrate to digital channels, branches can focus on delivering high-value, personalized services, reinforcing their role as advisory centers. Benefit #4. Elevate NPS with real-time engagement. It’s noteworthy that the average 7+ point increase in NPS we’ve observed isn’t solely due to appointment scheduling or lobby management. The true driver is the real-time, transparent communication that these systems facilitate. When customers are informed and guided through their banking journey, it fosters trust and satisfaction. Both customers and advisors value their time and seek trustworthy interactions. By implementing systems that respect these preferences, we create a win-win scenario, enhancing the overall banking experience. Benefit #5. Finally make the seamless shift to digital and advisory services. The banking landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, with a marked shift towards digital channels. Concurrently, the role of physical branches is being redefined. With a decrease in routine transactions handled in-branch, there’s a growing emphasis on providing advisory services that address complex and personalized financial needs. This evolution necessitates a strategic approach to appointment and lobby management, ensuring that branches can effectively serve their advisory purpose. Conclusion: Beyond the Queue Appointment and lobby management are more than operational tools; they’re catalysts for transforming the banking experience. At Coconut Software, we’ve seen the positive impact of implementing this must-have solution, from reducing queues in banks, to skyrocketing CSAT scores. When banks gain real visibility into advisor activities, align resources with customer demand, and facilitate real-time, personalized interactions, they can elevate both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency—which is the future of banking. As we continue to innovate and adapt, embracing these hidden impacts will be crucial in redefining the future of banking, ensuring that we meet the needs of our customers and empower our advisors in this dynamic landscape. If you’re ready for a serious discussion on appointment scheduling software, and want to learn more about how to choose the best online scheduling software for your bank or credit union, let’s talk. Book a Consultation
3 Ways to Improve the Digital Experience In Retail Banking
In today’s digital COVID-19 era, connecting with your potential customers has become an overwhelming challenge. Consumers are now searching for ‘experiences’, causing a number of organizations to focus on improving customer experience. The understanding is that if the consumer’s attention is divided and exposure is brief, investing in an experience that goes beyond a basic interaction is going to be appreciated. When considering the various channels of customer experience in the banking industry, it can be difficult to decide when to invest. Are customers interested in a better in-branch experience? Should you be investigating new outreach channels to keep the retail bank at the top of your customer’s mind? While these areas are important, we’d suggest the best place for the banking industry to start is the digital customer experience. With more people choosing to manage their finances and associated services on their mobile devices, banks and credit unions have been presented a great opportunity to develop engaging and positive digital experiences optimized for the devices they use. Below are some reasons why focusing on a digital experience is a great idea for banks. Want to learn more about improving the customer experience? Download our customer experience white paper today. Beat the Competition According to research done by The Financial Brand, only 37% of retail banking organizations have a formal customer experience plan. While investments to improve customer experience are increasing, with the majority of banks committing to increase investment over the next 3 years, most organizations are still focused on developing products and branch engagements rather than investing in their digital channels. These findings expose a large gap in overall banking strategy when it comes to digital strategy for the next 3 years. For institutions looking to revamp their digital efforts, this creates an excellent opportunity to step up and start investing in digital solutions around customer experience. The potential for retail banks that adopt a digital strategy earlier than their competitors is reaching customers others may not. By creating experiences tailor-made for the devices customers prefer to use, banks with a digital strategy are opening themselves up to potential customers that want to access services online. If a customer cannot get the services they require from a retail bank in the way they want them, like online banking, scheduling advisor meetings or learning about new services, they’re going to end up looking for another option that meets their needs. For more information on how to retain your client base, check out our blog on the 5 ways appointment scheduling keeps you one step ahead of the competition. Bank Customers are Unsatisfied In a study published by Bain and Company, it was revealed that only 45% of online customers feel that their digital interactions with banks satisfy their needs completely. From a mobile perspective, only 25% of customers feel that they can adequately work and properly communicate with a bank through their mobile interface. From a usability standpoint, the numbers end up being the same, with 44% of computer users and 34% of mobile users agreeing that their online retail banking resources are easy to use. These are some alarming gaps which signal that banks need to take the time to step up their online customer experience. As customers get used to managing other areas of their life like the convenience of digital shopping and instantaneously streaming entertainment, they’re going to demand that same kind of swift and satisfying experience from their bank. A self-serve, real-time experience where they can move through the products and services they want at the pace they desire. If the services provided are functional, but there is little attention paid to user experience, customers are going to be left frustrated, wanting more and looking elsewhere to get the solutions they desire. To learn more, check out our blog on why companies should consider self-serve solutions for more information on the benefits of providing online scheduling to your customers. Investing in Digital Improves Customer Experience and Adoption From the same Bain study, it was found that positive customer interactions that start online, continue online with greater loyalty than if they were to start in-person or over the phone. The likelihood of customers choosing to interact with a bank online has a lot to do with the security and quality of experience the bank has created. If the digital experience is not up to the level that customers want, you risk losing them to another competitor. By focusing on how customers typically use and interact with services, rather than product promotion or adoption, you can start creating a user experience that really sticks. An example of this would be after a user opens an account online, helpfully routing the user to the activities they’re most likely to do online such as paying a bill. As customers get familiar with the basic functionality, they start to become more comfortable with the digital experience, and begin to search out other ways to work with the bank online. By paying attention to how people make use of their services and mirroring the process online, you can ensure that users are getting the value they are looking for and the experience they appreciate.
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.
Adjusting Your Digital Marketing Channels to Engage with Bank & Credit Union Clients
Marketers in the financial industry need to change their execution mix between various channels – in branch, online, via mobile devices, and in apps. Digital transformation is here for banks and credit unions – transform how you engage and market to your customers by adjusting your digital marketing channels.
Virtual Meetings: Keep Calm and Connect Remotely
The global pandemic caused by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted nearly every corner of the world. For ourselves here at Coconut, we are lucky to have been able to allow all employees to settle into their remote working environments while continuing to serve our customers. We understand that we are lucky to have the ability to continue providing guidance and solutions to the issues this global crisis has imposed on them, their staff, their customers, and their way of life. Because we know that not everyone has the same option to switch to a work-from-home business model. They simply do not have the tools in place to make it possible. As countries around the world order businesses to close their doors and send workers home in an effort to flatten the curve, many citizens are feeling unprecedented levels of uncertainty about their future, as well as what that will mean for their finances. And with experts estimating that the total cost to the global economy is estimated at $2.7 trillion, they are not alone in their concerns. Everyone is affected, and everyone is looking for direction during these difficult times. This is why we pushed ahead with a priority release of our Virtual Meetings integration, a new feature that allows banks and credit unions to quickly and easily shift from traditional face-to-face meetings to a remote business model. Building on the core functions of our existing customer engagement solution, Virtual Meetings can help customers and advisors to continue their relationships in a digital setting, allowing them to communicate safely and securely from any location. Through a seamless integration with video conferencing providers like Zoom, customers are able to schedule their virtual meeting quickly and intuitively. And for those who prefer a more low tech solution, the ability to schedule a meeting over the phone is also available. All of this is available through the same self-service booking flow used for face-to-face meetings, and with no software to download and no need for customers to set up accounts, adoption is incredibly simple. Within just days of its release, 20 of North America’s leading banks and credit unions have enabled the new integration, with the Coconut team working tirelessly to help them navigate this newly imposed digital world. And as many branches are forced to close their doors, Coconut’s clients have expressed their appreciation for its rapid delivery. “This is a great example of providing a solution that is a real and present need due to the challenging and uncertain times we are in. We are still in the process of closing our branches due to the need that is still very present in our community, but will be shifting to using [Coconut Software’s Virtual Meetings integration] to help us do more remote video appointments very soon now.” Jeanne PickensCOO, Rogue Credit Union Following from our mission of “powering human engagements in a digital world”, remote meeting capabilities come as a natural evolution of our current offerings, and one that is needed today more than ever. Even prior to the current situation, the ability to connect remotely is something that has been increasingly important to our customers in the financial world. But now, with financial institutions and the customers they serve facing these unprecedented challenges, it’s more important than ever for us all to work together in keeping the lines of communication open. This is why Katherine Regnier, CEO and Founder of Coconut Software, has made the decision to provide this feature at no cost during this time of need. “Where digital customer engagement was previously viewed as a competitive advantage, it is now a requirement to keep customers and staff safe with physical distancing and managing foot traffic. It has made our solution a necessity.” Katherine RegnierCEO and Founder, Coconut Software With both financial institutions and their customers experiencing the full physical and financial effects of the current global crisis, it’s vital that banks and credit unions are able to continue to provide direction and reassurance — while also encouraging increased physical distancing. Whether they accomplish this through enabling staff and customers to meet remotely, or by simply reducing and managing foot traffic by switching to an appointment only business model, we have a solution ready and waiting to help see you through these days, and beyond. From all of us at Coconut Software, stay home, stay healthy, and stay in touch. Interested in our Virtual Meetings integration? Contact Us Today What Next? Looking for more strategies to meet your customers’ changing expectations? Download our report Becoming Future Proof: Five Proven Strategies for the Branches of the Future to learn more methods in technology, design, and service that banks and credit unions can take advantage of in preparation for the future. 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 business is set up to meet future challenges head on? Schedule a consultation with Coconut Software to learn more about how our tailored solutions can help.
How to Attract and Retain Millennial Customers in 2020
As the first generation to be raised with the absolute ease of technology – the norm of face-to-face interactions for banks and credit unions has shifted. Because of this, banks and credit unions face a difficult challenge; how do you attract and retain millennial customers who want to minimize interaction, and crave an enhanced digital experience. For those up to meeting this challenge – it could signify their greatest opportunity for growth. Over the next 10 years, 75% of customers seeking wealth management and personal financial services will be millennials. This is a concerning statistic for many finserv organizations since the millennial customer shows a number of differences in the way they prefer to interact with organizations compared to older generations. We will discuss the differences in how to communicate with a millennial customer and how an appointment management solution can help attract the up and coming generation and reduce churn. How can Coconut Software upgrade your institution’s digital presence and capabilities? Download the Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience today. Attract and Retain Millennial Customers – The Challenges 1. Millennials Have Higher Customer Service Expectations Millennials have grown up in the midst of the digital transformation and are used to the benefits that come with it. The digital experience has enabled many industries to increase the quality of the services they provide in terms of customer experience, and millennials have become accustomed to premium treatment. Financial Services is one of the oldest industries in the world, and also one of the last to begin the digital transformation. This is causing the millennial customer to seek out businesses that provide them with convenient digital service that they desire. 2. Millennials Prefer to Interact With Brands Digitally Millennials are a digital-centric generation, meaning they rely strongly on technology in their daily life, specifically their smartphones. Millennials expect immediate, online access to their finserv provider, whereas older generations were very comfortable picking up the phone or waiting for their service provider to get back to them. Millennial customers, more than other generation, are asking themselves, “if I can schedule a massage, order groceries and buy flights online, why can’t I book an appointment with my bank?” 3. Millennials Won’t Stay Loyal Just Because You Have a History Millennials are 2 to 3 times more likely to change service providers than any other generation. They are used to a digital experience with enhanced customer service, and they are not worried about leaving a current provider for an organization that meets all of their needs. And soon, those customers will make up the majority of the workforce. In fact, 30% of millennials report they have left their current bank or credit union because they found another finserv organization that provided a better experience. Attract and Retain Millennial Customers – How Appointment Management Solutions Help The increasing demands of the millennial customer are concerning to the legacy structure of the finserv industry, however, there are ways to keep the value of your business interactions while implementing solutions to attract the growing population of millennial customers and reduce churn. An appointment management tool offers multiple solutions to your millennial customer problem. 1. Improve Customer Experience With New Insight Into Customer Behavior When your organization leverages an appointment management solution, you will gain additional insight into the customer’s behavior and history with your organization. When you have an integrated scheduling platform, your customer-facing staff can access all the information collected during the appointment-booking. This will allow them to prepare for their upcoming appointment with the customer, enabling them to provide the enhanced customer experience the millennial customer craves. 2. Give Your Customers What They Want With Real-Time Online Appointment Scheduling With an integrated appointment management solution, you can offer real-time, 24/7 online appointment scheduling. This will allow your customers to schedule in-person interactions with your organization whenever and wherever they want, minimizing human interactions with your organization, which the millennial customer loves to avoid. Additionally, when your customers book appointments online, they will also receive reminders on their smartphones, which the average millennial checks about 43 times a day, reducing the chances of no-show appointments. 3. Keep Customers Loyal With Direct Feedback With an appointment management solution, your organization can send out automated follow-up emails to customers to gain feedback on the experience they had. People love to be asked their opinion, and asking your customers about their experience with your organization will make them feel valued and earn you major brownie points. We know millennials are less loyal than previous generations, but we also know customers who feel their financial services provider listens to their needs are more likely to remain loyal to that brand. Following-up with millennial customers and asking about the experience they had with your organization makes them feel like their opinion matters. Streamlining the digital experience up to the in-person interaction, while leveraging technology to provide a premium experience, will set your organization apart. Millennials are a completely new type of customer for the FinServ industry, and by leveraging a digital experience, your organization will be able to provide the services the millennial customer desires in order to attract new business and reduce churn. Discover A Modern Way to Engage Get In Touch What Next? Ready to learn more about upgrading your institution’s digital presence and capabilities? Download our Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience today. Looking to boost revenue and deliver a premium experience to your clients? Schedule a consultation with Coconut Software to learn more about how our appointment scheduling solutions can get you there.
The Top 4 Ways Branch Technology Can Match Customer Interest
From Teller Lines to Teller Less: Highlights From the Future Branches Report With the rise of Fintech and a customer base that’s becoming increasingly comfortable with the ease and convenience provided by new technology, banks have had to work harder than ever at bringing people into their physical branches. Tablets, video conferencing, digital signage and other technology has become standard in most modern banks and credit unions, and investments in personnel training has risen significantly. But how successful have they been in their efforts? Which branch technology implementations have been successful in matching customer interest? And importantly, what strategies have been most effective at keeping the branch ahead of the competition? Diving into the facts around customer-facing technologies, this report investigates how changes in the industry are transforming the physical branch. To compile this research, Future Branches conducted an industry survey of 100 banking professionals to develop a clear view into the current state of the branch experience, and where it’s heading in the years to come. View a summary of some of the highlights from their findings below, or download the full report to discover what banks are doing to match customer interest. 1. Banks are investing heavily in self-service technology The top 4 investment priorities reported in this study were digital signage (61%), video conferencing (58%), self-service tools (54%), and tablets for customer use (54%). Based on these results, it’s clear that banks are prioritizing customer-facing solutions — specifically, self-service technologies and digital display technologies — above others. The fact that over half of respondents are prioritizing video conferencing technology is significant. This is indicative of an ongoing trend to expand branch services into new geographical areas by creating “hub and spoke” branch arrangements and by enabling internet-connected customers to reach trained personnel from the comfort of their own homes, which fits in with another reported priority of banks in the study — to make banking more seamless with their customers’ personal lives (50%). “The bank wants more customer interaction at the branch. We believe we can achieve the desired levels of interaction through technology services.” – Information Technology Professional, Regional Bank For more in-depth survey results and expert insights, download the full report now. 2. Larger banks have a tech advantage The study found that 21% of banks believe they are behind their competitors in terms of the sophistication of their in-branch technology—that is, the degree to which they have modernized their physical branches. This study found that the majority of banks reporting themselves to be in this situation categorize themselves as regional or community banks or credit unions, while every global and the majority of national banks tended to claim they were “already a leader” or that they were at least “competitive”. But smaller banks and credit unions are rising to the challenge. While 21% believe themselves to be behind the competition, 20% are confident that they are making meaningful progress. “We have been an attraction for technology consultants and service providers over the years to try new technology which they have developed, and which we can use in our branches.” – Marketing Professional, Regional Bank For more in-depth survey results and expert insights, download the full report now. 3. Customer-facing tech is viewed as the safer investment With the wealth of tech available to financial institutions today, it’s perhaps not surprising that nearly half of banks (48%) are prioritizing implementing new technologies across all their branches. To support these new technologies, banks are prioritizing the training of in-branch personnel on customer-facing technologies (47%) and to a slightly lower extent, back-end technologies (41%). Looking more closely at the numbers, it appears that the difference could be resulting from pain points in training for new back-end systems, with banks reporting pain in that area sitting 3% higher than those reporting the training as a priority. Conversely, just 36% of banks report pains in training staff on customer-facing technology — more than 10% below those prioritizing that area of training. Looking at this, it appears that in their aim to match customer interest, most banks view investing in self-service style customer-facing technology to be much easier to implement. “Our bank wants to give complete experiences to our customers and to keep them excited by introducing new technologies on a regular basis.” – Marketing Professional, National Bank For more in-depth survey results and expert insights, download the full report now. 4. Banks are keen on overcoming pain points in training As discussed in the previous point, in order to take advantage of the latest technologies, banks are prioritizing the development of robust training regimens to get their in-branch personnel up to speed. The value of this high investment in training is clearly reflected in responses showing that 68% of banks rating themselves as ‘competitive’ or ‘a leader’ in terms of their in-branch personnel, but it isn’t without its challenges. In the study, respondents cited the struggle to create comprehensive training programs which accommodate branch personnel of different backgrounds and different levels of experience as a major pain point. Furthermore, measuring the development of personnel after training, keeping training relevant as new technologies continue to disrupt the industry, and retaining personnel after investing in their training are all issues that came up multiple times. “Retaining the personnel after we have spent on training them on the technology that they have [is our biggest pain point]. When they choose to move to another organization, we have to spend on training the next person, which does have a cost challenge.” – Sales and Service Professional, Regional Bank For more in-depth survey results and expert insights, download the full report now. Discover A Modern Way to Engage Get In Touch What Next? Ready to learn more about the way customers view the role of the branch in this rapidly changing digital landscape? Download the full Future Branches Study — From Teller Line to Teller-less: Aligning Your Mix of In-Branch Employees and Technologies with Customer Interests. Looking for more unique perspectives on the
4 Fintech Innovations for Creating Deeper Connections
The top 4 tech innovations in fintech emerging are turning casual bankers into devoted customers. How can banks and credit unions benefit from this trend?
3 Ways Credit Unions Can Connect With Millennials
Katherine Regnier, CEO and Founder of Coconut Software highlights the three key methods Credit Unions can use to connect with millennials.
6 Simple Ways to Optimize Your Website Calls-To-Action to Increase Appointment Volume and Revenue
In our last blog, we discussed how to increase the probability of customers successfully booking an appointment with your organization, by reducing the number of steps it takes to complete a call-to-action. To drive even more revenue-generating appointments through calls-to-action on your website, your organization can use appointment booking software to eliminate friction, track and measure CTA conversion rate, and optimize CTA performance with A/B testing. In this blog, we’ll cover the ways in which you can further optimize your CTAs to increase appointment volume and revenue. Why CTAs Are Critical in Generating More Appointments and Revenue. Financial services organizations are typically appointment-driven, meaning that new business is generated through in-person interactions between an advisor and the customer. When in-person interactions carry such high value, it is crucial that your CTAs are engaging enough to convert digital customer engagement into an in-person interaction, in order to generate new business and increase revenue. 6 Variables to A/B Testing to Improve Your CTA’s There are many variables that go into creating an optimized CTA: where it is, what it looks like and what it says. All of these variables contribute to whether or not a customer engages with your CTA. Here are some of the different components of the CTA that you can optimize with A/B testing: Headlines and value propositions, to receive the most engagement Colors of CTA buttons Placement of the CTA – to the right, above the fold? Landing page layout #1 Focus on a primary CTA for the landing page. One way to optimize CTA performance is to have one goal for each page on your website, and tailor the accompanying CTA to one desired customer action. Providing more than one CTA on a given page can overwhelm the customer and reduce the probability that they will complete the desired action. Each page on your website should correspond to a specific CTA in order to streamline the experience for the customer and increase your conversion rate. #2 Review your page headline and value proposition to ensure that it resonates. Through A/B testing the headlines and value propositions on your landing pages, you will learn more about the individuals visiting your website, as well as what does and does not engage them. By better understanding your audiences’ preferences, you will be able to produce headlines that are relevant to your customers and increase the chances of landing page action completions. Here are some headlines and value propositions that may help increase customer engagement: Save for retirement Start saving for your child’s future interests and activities Stay on top of your spending #3 Use language that’s direct, persuasive and prompts your visitors to take action. According to the Nielsen Norman Group, the average attention span of a digital customer is 10 seconds per web page that they visit. If you want your customers to engage with you, you need to “talk” to them with clear and direct CTA messaging. You should use tangible and action-oriented language to provide your customers with clear direction about what they will get by clicking on the specific CTA. These are some common calls-to-action for banking and credit unions: Book an Appointment Open a Chequing Account Find a Branch or Location Pre-Qualify for a Mortgage #4 Test different visual formats. Another way to keep the journey simple for your customers is by using buttons for your CTAs instead of links. When your pages are full of text it can be easy to miss the CTA when it is embedded as a link in the text. By creating button CTAs, you are increasing visibility and the probability of customer engagement. #5 Optimize your landing page layout. One way to increase the engagement of your CTAs is through providing a very direct path to your customers. Your landing pages should include an organized visual hierarchy that will take your customers through a set of cohesive steps so that they are equipped with the information they need when they reach the CTA. One of the ways to foster engagement is through a page layout known as the Z-pattern, which follows the natural habits of a customer when they read your web-page. The design traces the route that the human eye travels when reading — left to right, top to bottom. If you follow this pattern when leading to your CTAs then you may have a higher chance of achieving your desired customer engagement. #6 Provide secondary calls-to-action throughout the customer journey, for those who aren’t ready to take that next step. Although you do not want the CTAs on your landing pages to be competing for the attention of the customer, it is beneficial to provide subtle secondary CTAs for individuals early on in the buying process, who require more information before they engage in your primary CTA. This could be incorporated deeper into your landing page and say something like “Want more information?” Streamline the customer appointment booking journey across all channels and increase appointment volume with Coconut Software. Coconut Software enables you to streamline the customer appointment booking journey–from clicking a ‘Book an Appointment” CTA, to improving the conversion rate in your appointment booking funnel. Implementing a self-serve booking channel helps you accept after-hours appointment demand that you may not be capturing today, which can increase appointment volume by 41%. A self-serve appointment channel also helps you decrease no-shows, with automated appointment confirmations and pre-appointment reminders. And, over time, improving the customer appointment booking experience can lead to higher appointment value. When customers start their journey with your financial institution with clear, accessible CTA language, an intuitive appointment booking flow and convenient reminders about when to arrive and what to bring for their appointment, the advisor is better set up to deliver a successful appointment. What’s Next? Ready to discover what areas of your customer journey are damaging your customer effort score? Schedule a customer effort assessment. Interested in learning how appointment scheduling can help your entire organization engage more efficiently and effectively with customers?
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
Why Integrate CRM With Your Appointment Management Solution
Appointment management software plays a critical role in any organizations digital transformation. To get the most out of your solution, integrating your CRM software is a necessity. Doing so avoids a disjointed operations and a silo’d workforce, not to mention setting your organization up for future success. If you choose to implement and integrate a appointment management solution with your business CRM, you’ll want to ensure both applications provide an open API. This will allow your business to integrate both systems and experience the ultimate benefits of enhancing your operational processes. The Risks of Not Integrating Your CRM If your organization chooses a appointment management solution that does not provide integration options, you are placing yourself at an increased risk of slowing down operational processes, increasing informational gaps, and creating a disjointed customer experience. Impact on Operational Processes The information necessary for appointment management appointments, that also has to be stored in your CRM application, will require duplicate data entry if your appointment management solution is not integrated with your business CRM. This is going to be a nightmare for staff responsible for recording customer information, as they’ll have to re-input data that already exists in another application. And it will cost your organization money due to wasted staff time. Duplicate data entry is also problematic since it leaves room for error when an individual is asked to manually transfer information from one application to another. Disjointed Customer Experience Not integrating your appointment management solution with your CRM application may mean you are inadvertently delivering a disjointed customer experience. At the time of the appointment scheduling, your customer can give additional insight into their needs, and what they hope to accomplish in their upcoming appointment. But, if up-to-date information is not available when your customer-facing staff check the scheduling system to gain insight into a customer’s needs, they’ll end up working with outdated or no information at all. If you were the customer who scheduled an appointment with your financial services provider, imagine how frustrating it would be to answer several questions during the appointment scheduling, only to find out their advisor doesn’t have access to that information. Now, they have to answer the same questions again, since their advisor prepared for the appointment based on outdated information. Process without a CRM, appointment scheduling integration in your contact center Individual contacts your organization to book an appointment Contact center representative asks the individual for their basic information Contact center representative has no idea if the individual is a current or new customer Contact center representative has to input all the customer’s information to schedule the appointment Once the appointment is scheduled, the representative has to log into your business CRM to manually input this information for the second time, taking up time and leaving room for error Process with a CRM, appointment scheduling integration Individual contacts your organization to book an appointment Contact center representative asks the individual for their basic information Contact center representative can see if the individual is a current or new customer If the individual is a new customer, the information put into the scheduling system will also be saved to your organization’s CRM If they are a returning customer, the CRM will be able to populate the fields in the scheduling system, saving time for both the call center representative and the customer The result is a more streamlined reporting and back-end process The 3 Benefits of Integrating CRM When you are an appointment driven business, you want to ensure you are providing a premium experience to your customers, so they want to continue working with you. Integrating your appointment management solution with your CRM will enable your institution to communicate more effectively with your clients, streamline operational processes and improve communication. 1. Streamline Operational Processes Having a single, integrated platform, it will eliminate the task of duplicate data entry. Once both of your applications storing customer information are integrated, your staff will no longer have to input the same customer data into multiple applications. Not only does this streamline operational processes by removing a time-consuming task, but it increases the accuracy of customer information. Coconut Software’s appointment management platform allows your appointment analytics to directly sync to your CRM application so you can track metrics such as attempted and completed customer interactions with your business, and the customer information collected when the appointment was scheduled. The customer and company data is updated in real time, ensuring your advisors have the most recent customer data, allowing your organization to provide a premium customer experience and enhance operational efficiencies. 2. Enhance the Customer Experience Having your appointment management solution paired with your CRM application allows for all customer information to be stored in one place, enabling you to use multiple channels and streamline operational processes. Coconut Software’s appointment management platform allows you to capture and track information about the products your specific customers are using, and their previous behavior with your organization. With this information, you can tailor future interactions to meet their needs. For example, one of your customer-facing advisors checks the history of a customer with an upcoming appointment to discuss insurance plan options. While looking into their history, the advisor can see the customer has invested in a TFSA with your organization in the past. With this insight, the advisor prepares a pitch for another type of investment account to share with the customer during their appointment. This allows your organization to potentially up-sell customers and shows you are in tune with their needs and past behaviors. 3. Enhance Company Communication Another benefit of integrating your appointment management solution with your CRM application is that you can improve communication within your organization by having all of your employees working from the same platform. When a customer schedules an appointment through either your business’s online channel or contact center, the information collected at that time will also be visible in your CRM. This allows your customer-facing staff to have the necessary insight into