Customer Relationship Management system - in name, it sounds great: A system that will manage your customer relationships for you. In reality, though, many credit union executives wind up feeling let down by their CRM investment, coming to the conclusion that CRMs just aren't for credit unions.
As many as 60 percent of credit union leaders report underwhelming results from their CRM efforts, according to The Financial Brand. However, this may not be a problem with CRMs, but rather with credit union employees' expectations and understandings of how these systems work.
A few adjustments in expectation management and strategies on how to properly use a CRM can be enough to dramatically change your view on these incredibly helpful software solutions.
Get everyone invested
For your CRM to be truly successful, everyone in the credit union needs to understand it and use it regularly. That includes your tellers, your CEO and everyone in between. It can be easy for an executive to shrug off the importance of getting to know how a new CRM works - it is a sales tool, after all - but it's important to not give into this false impression.
For your sales team and everyone else in your organization to use the CRM on a regular basis, you need to lead by example. If you're not taking the new system seriously, there's little incentive for anyone else to, The Financial Brand pointed out.
However, organization-wide adoption of the CRM isn't always enough to encourage your sales team to fully use it correctly. The Financial Brand explained that a common pitfall to CRM is people not inputting relevant data on a regular basis. Most of your sales team likely already has a system they've been using since before you introduced the CRM. Convincing them to leave their old system behind in favor of the new one may take some time and effort.
In addition to creating a culture around the new CRM, learning the ins and outs of the system will also allow you to stay in tune with how well it's working for your credit union, and how well your team is adopting it.
Define your goals
You can't have measurable results without a scale of some sort. As such, when you introduce CRM to your credit union staff, you must also introduce tangible goals. Whether you want to focus on member satisfaction scores, new loan originations, debit card use or mobile bank actions, your CRM will be able to track your progress.
Credit Union Times suggested creating objectives that are directly related to your long-term goals for member retention, growth and relationship profitability. Additionally, it's important that you begin tracking progress right away, even if you haven't implemented your CRM yet. Measuring results before and after implementation will give you further insight into what kind of return on investment you're getting from the CRM.
Recognize progress along the way
Setting goals is a good first step to seeing results. To continue with positive momentum, it's important that you celebrate little goals along the way. Give your team feedback, highlight good progress on a regular basis and continue to give encouragement.
Remember, truly adopting a CRM into your day-to-day routine is completely different than implementing it. Total integration will take time and patience, the Credit Union National Association explained.
"Give it time," advised Chris Braccia, the director of product management at Harland Financial Solutions, according to CUNA. "Mastery of CRM can take anywhere from 18 months to three years. You don't do it in a rush."
Use data to make intentional sales
The whole point to CRM is to develop your relationship with each individual member in an intentional way. You know that no two members are alike, so their financial needs won't be identical, either. Your CRM will help you differentiate between two similar members who might be at slightly different points in life.
Offering a member the right financial product at the wrong time will render the same results as offering the wrong product. A CRM will help identify the right time as well as the right product, Credit Union Times explained. Additionally, keeping track of a members' goals and preferences will help future credit union staff have a positive interaction with that member going forward.
"People who come into a credit union are on serious business," Braccia noted. "They want to be greeted by name, acknowledged that they're doing a serious task, appreciated for their patronage, and reinforced in their perception that the credit union is a trusted financial ally."
Use the information recorded in the CRM system to determine what specific members could benefit from and what's relevant to their life. For example, the woman who just became a grandmother probably isn't interested in your student loan products, but she might be interested in opening a savings account for her grandchild.
There's a lot of work involved in implementing a CRM platform. But just getting it set up in your institution and introducing it to your team isn't enough for it to be successful. To get the most out of your CRM, be sure you and your staff are using the system to its full potential.
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