The Rise of Universal Banking

According to recent BAI research, 55% of the owners of small and medium-sized enterprises are willing to consolidate their personal and business relationships at the same financial institution. It is clear that in today’s highly mobile digital age, the bank customer has changed. The bank customer of today can access most of his or her bank needs through a mobile device. They can deposit checks, check balances, and process transfers directly from their banking apps. Bank products are becoming monotonous and commoditized.

Just about every bank has an app available for customers that does about the same thing. Banks are having a hard time separating themselves and their products apart from the competition.

This new trend in banking has forced many banks to go through a transformation. Many banks in their beginning stages are cutting back expenses and reducing costs to cope, but banks in mature markets are pushing their branch staff from traditional transaction-based roles to sales and service-based roles. These banks recognize that the best way to differentiate themselves from the competition is to focus on the relationship and experience between branch staff.

According to Ovum Research, many bank executives indicated that their top priority was “monitoring interactions between branch employees and customers to improve customer satisfaction.” The best way to monitor these interactions is to invest in the appropriate software. A great place to start is to invest in sales intelligence software.

Sales intelligence software that allows a bank manager to manage the performance of his or her branch staff through a dashboard that updates instantly is best. No matter if they are monitoring sales, calls made, or appointments set, they need to see the performance instantly and continuously so they can change campaigns and efforts accordingly. When used in conjunction with a sales performance dashboard, speech analytics software allows bank managers the ability to gauge the interactions between branch staff and customers.

According to Forbes, 63% of all leads are never adequately followed up with, but through recorded calls, branch managers can analyze conversations and behaviors. Some software even goes deeper and allows managers to gauge acoustic indicators of excitement, silence, and agitations.

All of these analytics can help a bank manager measure the effectiveness of his or her branch staff. This technology empowers managers to enforce script compliance, troubleshoot issues, benchmark successful behaviors, and quickly capitalize on new opportunities like cross up-sell.