CRM for finance: work smarter, not harder

The financial services industry is becoming more digital. With the rise of Fintechs, many companies are under growing pressure to adopt new digital technology and innovative ways of working.

Meeting customer expectations means providing both excellent service and great financial advice. That’s no mean feat. Sales and customer service teams therefore need to be agile, adaptable, and have in-depth knowledge ready at hand to offer tailored solutions.

Spreadsheets and manual data entry simply won’t cut the mustard. You need a modern, customer-facing approach—a CRM for finance.

Healthy customer relationships are vital for any company. Yet only 53 % of financial institutions believe they’re consumer-centric… Enter our hero: CRM.

Investing in a CRM solution can help increase efficiency and save both time and money. With a CRM in place, you can provide a more personalised service because you’ll have a better understanding of your customers’ financial needs and goals.

We’ve identified four key benefits of CRM for financial companies of all sizes:

1. Boost efficiency and productivity
   Time is money—and nowhere is this more true than in finance. So, it’s no surprise a SoftClouds survey revealed that approximately 82 per cent of organisations use customer relationship management systems for sales reporting and process automation.
   CRM can automate repetitive tasks like data entry and marketing to help streamline your workflows and improve efficiency. What’s more, most modern CRMs are also cloud-based and incredibly flexible. This means they can adapt to your needs to help your teams work at their best. And don’t forget: CRMs tell you a lot about your customers, but they can also tell you a lot about how your financial advisors and customer service agents are performing.
2. Make better decisions, faster
   Making the right decisions to build customer loyalty is vital for financial services companies: 77 per cent of customers will stay with a bank if they feel valued, according to Forrester’s Customer Experience Index 2018. Fortunately, it becomes a whole lot easier to make the right decisions when you have all the information you need right at your fingertips. CRM solutions store all your customer data in one place, making it easy for your teams to access the information they need, when they need it. This makes it easy to manage data effectively and see who your best customers are, so you can make the right decisions quickly. And of course, they also keep your data completely safe and secure.
3. Personalise your services
   It’s never been more important to understand your customers and their needs: an Accenture survey found that 40 per cent of banking customers would consider switching banks to get a more personalised service.
   A CRM solution helps you collect and utilise the right information to create detailed profiles and segment customers—so you can target your marketing and provide personalised advice. A single, centralised repository with fully up-to-date customer data and interactions makes it easy to provide customers with the best solutions to suit their needs.
4. Improve communication
   Good customer relations are essential in finance. However, a study from McKinsey found that customers are demanding more flexibility from digital banking, with 71 per cent preferring multichannel interaction and 25 per cent wanting a fully digital journey. Fortunately, CRM helps you track your customer interactions over multiple platforms and channels, so you can communicate with your customers wherever they choose and stay connected.

Beyond external communication, CRM also makes it easier for your teams to communicate and work together. Most CRMs are mobile-friendly and accessible from anywhere—great news for teams that work remotely.

Zendesk’s CX Trends 2021 report revealed that 75 per cent of decision-makers are increasing their investment in digital software—CRMs included.

But choosing the right CRM solution for your business can be tricky. Luckily, we’ve pulled together a few questions to ask yourself when comparing CRMs:

• Will it save time?
  Your CRM should automatically update information and schedule events. It should make your life easier by automating tasks, keeping data organised, and providing reminders.
• Will it reduce workload?
  Less data entry and more automation mean fewer errors and better service. A CRM should make email marketing, lead nurturing, and customer segmentation a breeze.
• Will it boost collaboration?
  Your CRM should integrate with existing apps and work on any device. It should give you more flexibility and allow your teams to work from anywhere.
• Will it improve support?
  Features like ticketing, knowledge bases, and self-service portals all help improve customer service. A CRM should make life easier for your customers—less waiting and more trust.
• Will it create opportunities?
  Your CRM should open new avenues like upselling and cross-selling. But it should also be able to grow and scale with your company.

Finance can be complex, but your CRM doesn’t have to be. Zendesk is the preferred solution for Xero, Wise, GoCardless, Mettle, and many more great names—big and small.

So, if you’re looking for a CRM for finance, Zendesk might well be for you. It works right out of the box and is fully customisable as well as scalable. Plus, it’s easy to use thanks to a clean and simple interface.

But don’t just take our word for it, ask our customers:

Xero provides award-winning software that takes the stress out of accounting. The company was founded in 2006 and has grown into a major player in the online accounting software market.

With more than 600,000 subscribers around the world, Xero handles its fair share of customer requests. And after struggling with multiple service management tools, the company was looking for something to consolidate all service requests into a single platform. Enter Zendesk.

Support teams said goodbye to logging tickets in multiple systems and hello to visibility of all tickets in a single space. Xero was impressed not only by the look and feel of Zendesk but also its ease of use. And the benefits soon became clear across the company with more and more teams rolling out instances of Zendesk and customising it to suit their specific needs.

“It met all our technical requirements, was in the cloud, and gave us the flexibility to easily add new teams. Head and shoulders, Zendesk was above the other offerings.” - Hadleigh Lynn, Support Team Lead—Internal IT at Xero

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