First impressions are important. In seconds, they can shape the future of relationships and the bottom lines of customer testimonials. The precursors to decisions we make about people all start with a few seconds of introduction, and it’s the same story when we try a new restaurant, store, or service. New Accounts is the first impression customers get of your business, and therefore it has a hefty responsibility to please that no other part of your organization has.
Given this, if your New Accounts process doesn’t run smoothly, it can make a substantial difference in customer satisfaction, retention, and your ability to cross-sell. If a new customer needs to be asked for the same information repeatedly right off the bat or wait lengthy amounts of time for ID checks or compliance processes, it will immediately affect their opinion of your organization. Chances are they’ll be less likely to do any additional business with you, and they might even second guess their choice in financial institutions. Printing out tons of documents for signing can also be complicated and confusing. Customers don’t want to walk into a paper hurricane in order to open a New Account with you.
It might be helpful to state now that there’s a solution that can help with these issues. It’s called Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Since you’re probably a (mostly) normal person who doesn’t search around for things that sound complicated and boring, you’ve probably never heard of this, but it’s actually quite helpful. Let me explain how it applies to you.
First off, it organizes your information so it’s easily accessible and searchable, meaning you’ll never need to keep asking customers for their information. Once you enter it into your computer the first time, it’ll always be there in your ECM system, easy to find. Next, it speeds your processes by automating redundant tasks, streamlining the steps involved in ID verification and compliance and minimizing the wait time for customers. And with electronic signature capabilities, neither you nor the customers have to shuffle around a bunch of paper. When using enterprise content management to open a new account, everything is right in front of you the whole time. You’ll never have to leave your customer sitting and waiting for you to come back, and the process will go much faster and smoother.
ECM is a powerful business process solution that can obliterate the inefficiencies in your new accounts processes and enable you to provide top-notch customer service to maximize retention and cross-selling. For more information on ECM for financial services, check out our financial case study below!
