The power of relationships as the real revenue driver

WATCH NOW
Coconut Software Logo

Tag: Digital Transformation

The Top 4 Ways Branch Technology Can Match Customer Interest

Blog Hero - Branch Technology - Matching 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

How to Instantly Increase Revenue Generating Appointments with Calls-to-Action

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - Revenue Generating Appointments CTA

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

The Importance of Providing Real-Time Service

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - Real Time Service

Did you know 80% of customers drop off the line when placed on hold for over 1 minute to schedule an appointment?  Reduce churn, and optimize the customer experience by providing real-time service. As an appointment driven business, it is crucial you provide a seamless scheduling experience for your customers to drive business to your organization’s branches. A study run by Accenture found 49% of customers switched service providers in the past year due to poor customer service.  With the increase in customer service expectations, if customers feel they are receiving a poor experience, they are finding it easier than ever to change service providers. It’s crucial you provide your customers with the experience they crave in order to reduce churn. Risk of not providing real-time service to your customers When your appointment driven business does not provide real-time service, it can create a frustrating customer journey, leading to increased churn.  For example, when a customer calls your contact center to schedule an appointment, and are immediately placed on hold for a long time, it could make them feel undervalued and prompt them to take their business elsewhere. Here’s a breakdown of how things might be playing out in your call center without the benefits of a real-time service First hold: Customer calls into the branch and is placed on hold for the next available representative. Basic details: Once the customer gets through to the representative, they are asked for their basic personal information, and what service they require. Second hold: Customer is on hold for the second time while the call center representative searches through multiple platforms to find the necessary information to book the appointment. Finally, booking the appointment! The customer is taken off hold for the second time, and can now coordinate an appointment time that works for them and the qualified advisor. Additionally, this is a problematic process as it leaves room for error, such as double booked appointments because the data is not recorded in the system in real-time. This leaves a window where appointment slots appear available even after they have been promised to a customer. Benefits of providing real-time service With an integrated appointment scheduling solution, your organization will be able to schedule appointments in real-time with a streamlined process.  Your customers will feel their time is valued, and you’ll improve operational processes in your organization. Show your customers that you care When your organization puts in the extra effort to show your customers you value their time, it can go a long way.  Once you’ve implemented integrated appointment scheduling in your organization’s contact center, you can offer 24/7 online portals, catering to the enhanced customer service experience your customers expect. You will also be able to streamline the appointment booking process when you implement integrated appointment scheduling into your organization’s contact center.  This will subsequently reduce the length of the initial hold when the customer calls to schedule an appointment with your organization, as well as call handle time. And, if you choose to implement an online scheduling portal, your customers will have the ability to schedule appointments with your organization wherever and whenever they want, in real-time. Here’s a breakdown of how things might be playing out in your call center with the benefits of a real-time service Customer calls into the branch: Customer calls into the branch and connects to a call center representative. Representative accesses the integrated booking platform: The representative is taken through a streamlined booking sequence. Books the appointment! The call center representative can go forward and schedule the appointment with the customer, having all qualified advisor calendars open on one platform. Enhance Operational Processes When you implement integrated appointment scheduling, not only do you provide your customers with a better experience, you are also improving your organization’s operational processes.  Manual, outdated appointment scheduling does not update staff data and availability in real-time, leaving lots of room for confusion. This can result in double booking appointments, or matching customers staff that aren’t qualified to carry out the service that they require. Rather, with an integrated platform, all appointment data is hosted in one place and customers can schedule their appointments through whichever channel best suits them. But the addition of 24/7 channels won’t affect your operational processes, as all the data from each channel will be updated in real-time in one virtual location. Providing customers with real-time service is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity with the digital transformation taking n over the financial services industry, bringing with it increased customer service expectations.  Coconut Software’s integrated appointment scheduling tool is the perfect solution to provide your customers with real-time premium appointment scheduling while streamlining your organization’s operational processes. For more information on the benefits that come with integrated appointment scheduling, book a consultation today!

Why Integrate CRM With Your Appointment Management Solution

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - Integrate CRM with Appointment 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

Investing in New Technology Training

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - New Technology Training

Successfully implementing your digital transformation doesn’t end after launching new software/technology. Investing in new technology training is a key step in the implementation process to produce optimal results. Implementing new technology is great, but if you don’t know how to use it properly, you may be paying for features or functionality that aren’t delivering much value. Many organizations offer add-on training sessions to teach customers how to navigate all the features of their new implementation, which allow you to optimize the return on your investment. According to Middlesex University, 56% of HR Managers consider training and development to be an essential business enabler. Time is money, and one might think that training is a drain on time, that could be better spent working. However, the real cost that will negatively affect your organization comes into play if you’re not planning or executing your training programs correctly. Why Invest in New Technology Training? Choosing to invest in additional training sessions will allow your organization to get the most out of your new implementation. Ideally, you’ve chosen a solution that provides the most benefits to your organization. Getting trained on your new solution allows your staff to learn from the experts on how to utilize the new features and functionality, which means that you can expect the best return on your investment. No matter what solution you have chosen, it is going to have some impact on either your customer-facing channels and/or your back-end processes. Getting trained on your new implementation will enable your staff to use the new solution in the best way, in order to maximize operational processes. Although your vendor might have an amazing support team, it uses a lot of your organization’s time if your staff rely solely on customer support to manage your new implementation. The risk of relying on customer support from your technology vendor is that it can lead to inefficient operational process, waiting for the vendor’s support team to address basic questions about the solution that could be managed in-house if your staff receive the proper training. Additionally, investing in a training program for your new solution will greatly increase its adoption amongst your employees. When your staff are properly trained on how to manage your new technology solution, they will be much more likely to adopt it and benefit from the features it provides. allowing your organization to function at an optimal level. Avoid Poor Adoption and Frustrated Employees Your new implementation can become more of a detriment than a benefit if you choose to forgo a training program, ultimately blocking-up your operational processes. By opting to not go through a training program of your new implementation, you open yourself up to the risk of poor adoption by employees in your organization. If employees are not properly trained on how to effectively use the new software, there is little chance that your new implementation is going to have a high adoption rate. This is problematic as you will have different individuals within your organization using different applications and workflows, leading to disorganized back-end processes, which will inevitably lead to a poor customer experience. Not providing training for your employees can also increase turnover, especially if it is integrated into the regular tasks of their job. Not providing your employees with training on your new implementation that you are requiring them to use can cause frustration. This is due to the pressure being put on employees to use technology that they are not familiar with, resulting in blocked-up operational processes. Technology solutions are not cheap and typically involve a lot of effort from your organization to choose and subsequently implement. Spending the extra money on a training program for your new implementation is a worthwhile investment for your organization as it properly teaches employees how to successfully use the new solution and enhance operations processes. Why Invest in Coconut Software Training? At Coconut, our onboarding team is dedicated to providing our customers with a personalized implementation process, to ensure that you receive the most out of your scheduling solution. During the implementation process, our onboarding staff will conduct consultations with the stakeholders involved in the roll-out of your new solution, to understand and help create your unique workflow. Should you choose to take advantage of the training program for your new solution, our staff will use your use case as a base for putting together a customized training package. We have several learning materials available in terms of how your organization can go through the training process, all customizable to your organization’s use case and branding: Recorded, interactive webinars Modular tutorial videos Written user guides Recorded webinars This is a recorded, interactive training tool that includes a live tutorial on how to maneuver your new scheduling solution. Additionally, serving as a guide that you can refer to down the road. Modular Videos This training tool includes recorded videos on how to use the solution, tailored to your organization’s unique use case, and can be shared within your company, as well as uploaded to your organization’s LMS, or Learning Management System. User Guide User guides are written documentation that explains how to use your solution. We tailor the information in the user guide to fit your unique use case, as well as brand the document according to your organization’s guidelines. It is important that your employees get the training they require when first implementing new technology within your organization to streamline operational processes and foster high adoption. However, it is also crucial that you have the necessary resources available to onboard new employees an train them on your solution down the road. The amount of time and effort that goes into choosing and implementing new technology, it is in your best interest to empower yourself, as well as your employees, with the necessary training in order to get the most out of your new solution as well as improve operational efficiencies. What Next? Looking to boost revenue and deliver a premium experience to your

The Importance of Securing Early Buy-In from Decision Makers

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - Importance of Early Buy-In

Securing Early Buy-In: Mirroring the customer service trends evident in retail and other industries, bank and credit union customers are seeking to interact with their financial service providers in new ways. In response, many FinServ organizations are beginning a front-end (and back-end) digital transformation. Choosing the right technology solution for your organization is the first big hurdle, but planning and executing a successful implementation can be a challenge unto itself. One way to ensure that the implementation runs smoothly is by securing early buy-in from the decision-makers in your organization. The Importance of Early Buy-In Not acquiring early buy-in from your key decision-makers could leave you open to the risk of going through lengthy sales-cycles with various FinTech solutions, to ultimately find out that they do not meet the needs of the stakeholders in your organization. This ends up costing you time and slows down your digital transformation process. Early buy-in from decision-makers will ensure you have support throughout the process, allowing for an efficient roll-out of your technology solution. It is in your best interests to start by assessing the needs of each stakeholder before you start the sales cycle for a new technology implementation. This way, the implementation process becomes much easier, increasing the pace at which your new implementation can be up and running with the support from ‘higher-ups’ within your organization. Of course, bringing the solution to the attention of decision-makers early on in the process is one thing, but securing buy-in is another. Here are some ways your organization can gain support for your next technology investment. Highlight the Operational Inefficiencies to Solve The first step in securing buy-in from stakeholders is to bring operational inefficiencies to their attention. A significant part of any technology implementation is to correctly identify the issues affecting the operational process within your organization. By doing so, you will be able to choose an implementation that will effectively tackle what’s going wrong, and will also improve key processes. Bringing these issues to the attention of decision-makers within your organization will help garner support for a new technology implementation. Issues that affect the customer experience and reduce efficiency mean the loss of revenue for your organization, and as soon as you highlight and emphasize issues that are currently affecting company revenue, decision-makers will be more likely to invest their support in a new solution. Pitch a Solution, Not the Product After highlighting the areas within your organization that are in need of an upgrade, it is wise to pitch the benefits of the new solution rather than the product itself. As an example, let’s say that your organization is experiencing long contact handle times in its contact center, causing customers who are trying to book an appointment to drop off the line. And once appointments are booked, your customer-facing staff are seeing high no-show rates, in part because you have no way to send automated reminders or calendar invites for appointments. To solve these issues, you have decided to implement integrated appointment scheduling in your organization. Pitching the implementation as a product look like this – “Integrated appointment scheduling will be beneficial to our organization, as it has many features that will enhance our operational processes, such as: The ability to track appointment analytics within our organization. Integration with our CRM and give customer-facing staff insight into customer history with our organization. Sending custom branded follow-up emails after appointment completion. Integration into our online platforms, giving customers 24/7, self-serve appointment scheduling.”   Yes, these are the benefits that come with integrated appointment scheduling, but they are not what you need to highlight to secure buy-in from stakeholders. Rather, we recommend cutting to the chase and instead, highlight how the solution will help you solving problems that you’re currently experiencing. Pitching the implementation as a solution to the organization’s operational issues looks like this – “Integrated appointment scheduling is the right solution for our organization, as it has many features that will address the inefficiencies we are experiencing in our scheduling process. It will allow us to enhance the customer experience and improve operational processes, such as: Integrating all appointment scheduling applications into one platform. Streamlining the appointment scheduling process for our contact center representatives and significantly reducing contact handle time by having all applications on one platform. Automatically sending confirmation emails to customers after they have booked their appointment through the contact center. Using notifications to remind customers of their appointment to reduce the number of no-shows.” Know the Solution & Paint the Picture Highlighting the benefits of your ideal solution is beneficial, but drawing out how it will fit into your organization makes the idea more tangible, and increases your chances of buy-in. This is different from listing the features that will help solve the issues affecting your organization and is more of a “picture this” approach. Let’s say you have listed the benefits of an integrated appointment scheduling solution, but you still don’t have complete buy-in from your stakeholders. Now is the paint a picture of what the solution would look like in your organization. Describe Your Current State “Here is a breakdown of what currently happens in our contact center when a client tries to book an appointment: First Hold: Customer calls into the branch and is placed on hold for the next available representative. Basic details: Once the customer gets through to the representative, they are asked for their basic personal information, and what service they need. Second Hold: Customer is placed on hold for the second time while the contacts center representative searches through multiple platforms to find the necessary information to book the appointment. Checking branch locations: The representative searches for the nearest branch to the customer, typically using a geolocator. Searching available, qualified staff: Then the representative has to search through an extensive list of employees who work at that branch location to try and find an advisor who is qualified to conduct the service the customer requires. Checking staff availability: The contact

Losing Customers Due to a Manual Appointment Scheduling Process?

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - MBWP_BlogHero_LosingCustomers Appointment Booking Procoess

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. Ready to discover what areas of your customer journey are damaging your customer effort score? Schedule a customer effort assessment. 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 are 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. 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. 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 is convenient, 24/7 accessibility to your organization. If your organization cannot keep up with new self-service trends, then you are running the risk of your customers going elsewhere in search of the customer experience that they desire. A study run by Accenture found that 49% of customers switched a service provider in the past year due to poor customer service.  As the scheduling process is the first touchpoint for your customers with your organization, you want to ensure that you are providing them with the channels that they desire, and that provide them with a positive experience. More organizations are beginning to adopt new self-service trends, which provide their customers with a faster and more convenient experience.  Implementing a solution such as enterprise appointment scheduling allows your customers the option to interact independently with your company on a convenient and easy to navigate platform.  Enterprise appointment scheduling can be integrated into your organization’s online, customer-facing channels, providing customers with a 24/7 appointment scheduling tool, that caters to their ever-increasing expectations around customer experience. Increase Scheduled Appointment to Increase Revenue How many different steps must customers go through in order to scheduling an appointment with you? Where are the biggest

3 Reasons to Digitally Transform Your Contact Centers

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - Digitally Transform Contact Centers

In todays digital era, consumer needs have evolved. It’s no longer a matter of “if” banks will become fully digital, but “when.” The prospect of a digital transformation in the financial services industry does not necessarily mean the end of all traditional customer experience channels, like contact centers. In fact, using technology to improve the communications channels that are already in use and familiar to your customers is a great way to ease both your client base and your staff into the future of banking technology. As the first touchpoint for many appointment-driven businesses, 75% of organizations view the customer service provided in contact centers to be a key differentiator between competitors. Is your organization’s contact center providing your customer with a positive experience? Ready to learn more about upgrading your institution’s digital presence and capabilities? Download Coconut Software’s Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience. According to a study done by Cornell University, the financial services market tends to leverage larger contact center operations compared to other industries and is lagging behind in implementing contact center management software. While many banks and credit unions depend on contact centers as a channel for scheduling appointments with customers, many have little to no visibility into contact handling process efficiency. Unfortunately, this sluggishness to modernize the back-end is resulting in customers waiting, and waiting on the line as contact center agents try to assist them while navigating archaic processes on the other end of the line. As you look for ways to transform your contact center, it is important to highlight areas that could be made more efficient by implementing digital tools. For example, lengthy contact handle time, poor customer experience and high operational costs are all issues that likely plague your contact center and affect your organization as a whole. Enterprise appointment scheduling is one type of contact center technology that can help improve contact efficiencies, reduce operational costs and improve the customer experience. Here’s how. Digitally Transform Your Contact Centers With Appointment Scheduling Decrease Call Handle Time The number of calls that contact center representatives can accommodate in a day is a key success metric that impacts many other areas of the business. For appointment-driven financial services organizations, more completed phone calls equal more appointments and more revenue for your branch locations. And yet, 23% of companies still do not measure call handle time in their contact center. Long call handle times lead to long hold times for customers waiting in the queue, and 80% of customers drop off the line after being placed on hold for over 1 minute. One of the ways you can make significant inroads in increasing call handling efficiency is by implementing an enterprise appointment scheduling solution. Implementing a scheduling solution creates a more streamlined appointment scheduling process that allows your contact center representatives to accommodate more calls in a day. This can also contribute to improving the customer experience by reducing the amount of time customers have to spend on the line with your organization, just to schedule an in-person appointment. Additionally, by speeding up the appointment scheduling process you can schedule more appointments, driving more revenue to your organization’s branch locations. Improve Customer Experience 57% of companies can relate improving customer experience levels to revenue growth. For appointment-driven businesses, the contact center is the first point of contact between your organization and its customers, and so it absolutely must deliver a positive first impression. If you are an appointment-driven business and your contact center schedules the majority of your appointments, it is crucial that the customer information collected at the time that the appointment is scheduled is passed on to the advisor meeting with that customer. There is nothing more frustrating for a customer, that already had to go through the tumultuous process of scheduling an appointment, to show up to an advisor that has no insight into their needs. However, 54% of customer information collected at the time the appointment was scheduled is not relayed to the customer-facing advisor. An enterprise appointment scheduling solution can be integrated across all channels in your organization and allows for information that is collected from one customer-facing channel, to be stored on one platform that can be accessed by another customer-facing channel. This means that your organization can capture additional information at the time of the appointment scheduling by adding custom questions integrated into the scheduling process. The answers to these custom questions can then be accessed by the customer-facing advisor, enabling them to better prepare for their upcoming appointment with the particular customer and tailor the appointment to their needs. An additional benefit to implementing a scheduling solution into your organization’s contact center is that it allows you to add new touch-points to the customer journey that will reduce the appointment no-show rate, as well as make your customers feel valued. Your customers will be sent a confirmation email reminding them of the service, date and time of the appointment they just scheduled as well as any additional information they need in order to be prepared for their upcoming appointment. Additionally, SMS and email reminders can be sent out to customers reminding them of their upcoming appointment, reducing the chances of a no-show. Customers will appreciate these additional touch-points as we live in a busy world and it is easy to forget the commitments that they have made, and it makes them feel looked after and that their scheduled appointment is valued. By integrating your contact center channel into other customer-facing platforms in your company you can drive more revenue into the organization and provide customers with a premium experience. Decrease Workforce Costs Forrester recently reported that call volume is expected to increase over the next 12 months and 46% of global contact center decision makers project their contact centers to grow by 5% to 10% to accommodate the increase. Many organizations are pouring more of their resources into increasing rep headcount in their contact centers to manage the call volume, but this is

What is Stalling the Digital Transformation for Your Bank?

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - Stalled Digital Transformation in Your Bank

There is a major digital transformation occurring in the financial services industry and some organizations are moving faster than others. Has your organization found itself falling behind in the banking technology rush? In this post, we’ll explore some of the reasons why some banks, credit unions, and other financial services institutions have found it challenging to keep up with digital trends, and what to do to overcome these roadblocks. 3 Major Obstacles Blocking the Digital Transformation for Your Bank 1. Older back-end processes hinder IT innovation We’re moving towards the future of digital banking at a rapid rate. And given this pace, you’ve probably observed that your organization’s core technologies are struggling to support integrations with newer technologies that are available. To help overcome these challenge, you should seek out new systems that both enhance the operational processes in your organization and are compatible with your current core technologies. 2. Key talent gaps in the team The next common obstacle you may be experiencing has to do with your people. Again, given the pace of innovation and change due to new technologies in the workplace, your organization’s IT team may be struggling to support new technology implementations that are available.  If you don’t want your tech team to be taken away from the important day-to-day work that keeps your organization running in order to manage new implementations, you should seek out new technology that requires minimal in-house resources to implement. If this is not possible, you may want to consider bringing in senior IT talent who has experience with large-scale technology implementations and can help you navigate the pitfalls and obstacles. 3. Organizational resistance to changes that threaten the status quo Customers and staff can have a difficult time adjusting to rapid change. This is understandable, however, change is inevitable and is absolutely the way forward if your organization is going to keep up with digital transformation in the bank sector to stay competitive. That said, finding a tool that is intuitive and user-friendly is key to the success of your business and will allow ease of staff and customer adoption while improving the customer experience. Overcome Your Banks Stalled Digital Transformation with Appointment Management Solutions When looking at tech solutions that will enable your organization to offer a premium, digitized customer journey, online scheduling is just the implementation for the job. Enterprise appointment scheduling can help you overcome a number of obstacles traditionally associated with tech implementations and can be integrated into your current customer communication channels as well help you open up new, online channels. The benefit of a scheduling solution that integrates into different channels is that is can be rolled out in phases to ease both your staff and customers into your digital transformation. Call Center Integration By starting tech implementations through existing channels, such as your organization’s call center, your in-house IT resources will not be swamped by your new solution.  Additionally, organizational resistance will be low due to your new implementation enhancing a channel that both staff and customers are already familiar with. Online Integration The benefit of implementing an enterprise scheduling solution is that you can also offer new channels, that allow your customers the ability to book appointments in real time, 24/7.  This caters to one of the many ever-increasing customer expectations that your organization be accessible to them at all times. How Coconut Software Can Help Once you have decided that enterprise appointment scheduling is what your organization needs, where do you go from there? Simple implementation Choosing a tool that can be implemented in a matter of weeks with a dedicated support team is key, especially if your organization is at the beginning of its digital transformation, lacking up-to-date, back-end support. Coconut can be implemented within a matter of weeks and allows your organization to have a smooth implementation that is ready whenever you are. “Amazing support structure, quick turn around times, and always willing to work with us to provide out of the box solutions.” – Carly Lock, Rogers Full support team It can be a struggle to use a significant amount of in-house resources to implement a new solution in your organization. Looking for a tool that comes with an exceptional support team that will allow you to use a minimal amount of your own resources is beneficial.    Coconut provides you with a dedicated customer success coach as well as a project manager to support your financial organization to kick-start the digital transformation for your bank. “Our experience with Coconut has been excellent. Their team of dedicated professionals worked hard to accommodate our needs and we are very pleased with the end results.” – Nathan Heemskerk, Tandia Financial Credit Union Easy transition through channels Customers and employees can be adverse to change.  Implementation adoption is very valuable but hard to attain. Coconut can be integrated into existing channels, such as your organization’s call center, as well as new channels, such as your online platform, easing both your customers and staff into the digitization of the banking industry. Any transformation can be daunting, especially one that is shaking up an entire industry, however, change is inevitable and choosing an implementation that best supports your organization in this time of change is key.  Enterprise appointment scheduling is that tool that your financial organization has been looking for. Schedule a consultation today to experience the benefits of enterprise scheduling solution.  

5 Benefits of Digitizing Your Back-End Process

Coconut Software - Blog Hero - Digitizing the Back-End Process

Organizations are scrambling to stay ahead of their competitors in the finance industry, with digitizing the back-end process being at the forefront of innovation. However, 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-end of financial organizations, it’s clear that inefficient back-end processes can have a negative impact on customer experience. Complex legacy IT systems, manual paper-based processes and orphaned data sources often result in high costs, poor agility, plus the customer issues of delayed response-time and lack of a seamless experience. 64% of consumers saying that they expect companies to respond to them in real-time, however, how are they able to correspond with your organization in real-time if your back-end isn’t digitally enabled and ready to respond? Digitizing the back-end process within your financial organization is crucial for the success of customer-facing channels and can have a significant impact on your organization’s potential growth. Ready to learn more about upgrading your institution’s digital presence and capabilities? Download our Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience today. Improve Customer Experience, Increase Efficiency, Cut Costs One of the key reasons to digitize the back-end is that it enables you to differentiate your customer journey, and offer customers unique benefits such as 24/7 access, real-time responses, and personalized experiences. Other than improving the customer experience, digitizing your back-end process also allows for an increase in efficiency and cut down on costs.  Lloyds Banking Group invested in a digital back-end technology that reduced the time it took to do certain processes by 90%.  By reducing processes within your organization you will increase efficiency and subsequently boost revenue.  According to Capgemini, automating back-end processes can help banks save 30% of their annual costs. From the process to error remediation, to training costs, overall savings can be significant. Digital Optimization Implementations Digitizing your back-end process in order to support your customer-facing channels, improve customer experience and enhance the productivity of your business may sound like an overwhelming undertaking. Where should your organization start? Ideally, you should start by automating one section of the customer journey. You can start by asking yourself a few questions: Which elements of the customer journey require significant manual effort to deploy on the back-end Which elements of the customer journey are resulting in significant customer dissatisfaction? Are there tactical solutions available to automate these manual processes? Which solutions can be implemented quickly to start delivering benefits immediately?   One great place to start is your first customer touchpoint: scheduling an appointment. Having appointment scheduling as the first touchpoint means that it is your customers’ first impression of your organization, meaning that you have the opportunity to form a positive relationship with your customers based on the quality of the experience that you provide. Identifying an area in the customer journey in need of change is a great place to start, and implementing a tool that is user-friendly and able to integrate into both customer-facing and back-end processes is an effective first step. The digital transformation occurring in the financial services industry at the moment is relatively new and your organization, as well as your customers, need something that will allow a smooth transition into the future of banking technology. Enterprise appointment scheduling is a tool that enhances customer-facing channels while also streamlining the back-end processes in your organization.  It can be implemented organization-wide, into your contact center’s appointment scheduling process, in branch as well as online, providing a new appointment scheduling channel to your customers.  This is beneficial to the back-end processes of your organization for multiple reasons such as … Consolidated Customer Behaviour Data Because the channel is integrated organization-wide, every appointment scheduling channel–contact center, branch locations, head office– will have access to the same appointment data.  This allows for your organization to speed up the scheduling process because there will be no need to correspond with other employees in other areas of your organization to ensure that no appointments are double booked or missed by advisors because they were not informed of the scheduled appointment. All scheduled appointments and staff availability would be sync across all platforms to ensure appointment scheduling accuracy and that no appointment slots or advisors get double booked due to miscommunication between the two channels. Track Appointment Analytics Integrated appointment scheduling syncs data across all appointment channels in your organization, but also offers your contact center staff the ability to capture additional customer information prior to the appointment, like past financial needs, what brought them to your organization, and who will be attending the appointment. This can help improve the quality of the in-person interaction. Post-appointment, having the ability to track appointment success rate as well as no-show rate allows your organization some insight into valuable sales information around product and services, as well as operational inefficiencies that you can address with a more targeted plan in the future. Coconut Software offers clients a host for appointment analytics which helps highlight friction points in the customer-facing appointment scheduling journey such as: Where in the scheduling process customers are dropping off before submitting the appointment request What branch locations book the most appointments which staff are providing the highest customer satisfaction according to customers.   Using the back-end process of enterprise scheduling to track analytics allows your organization the ability to assess the processes it has in place in order to provide the best service possible to its customers. Optimize Staff Times in One Program In large organizations, it can get chaotic to keep track of all of the information on customer-facing staff in order to schedule appointments. You need to track staff availability as well as updated qualifications, and hosting all of your customer-facing employee data on one platform allows your organization to run as smoothly as possible.  With enterprise scheduling, you can host advisor data on a platform that is organization-wide and able to be updated in real-time. This enhances the organization within your