How Operational Inefficiencies Impact Bank and Credit Union Talent Recruitment and Retention
Many community banks and credit unions still operate with legacy systems and antiquated processes that can no longer keep pace with today’s demanding consumers and fast-paced environment.
In addition to degrading the customer experience, these back-office inefficiencies and shortcomings negatively impact employee morale. Staff, who are left to deal with sticky notes, manual processes, disparate systems, and multiple logins, often experience frustration. This is then felt by the customers and members.
By integrating all customer information into a single system with a CRM, banks and credit unions can improve operational efficiency and better serve their customers and employees. In addition to boosting the bottom line, it also helps address the industry’s issues with talent retention and recruitment.
When Technology Problems Equal Talent Problems
A large number of banks and credit unions still operate with decades-old systems. The negative impacts expand further than many realize.
These systems are slow, inefficient, and rely on many manual processes and interventions. It can degrade the consumer experience across all customer touchpoints, including onboarding, in contact centers, in the branch, and online. This is critical as customers increasingly demand a faster and frictionless experience.
However, legacy technologies and operational inefficiencies also impact a financial institution’s ability to retain and attract talent. First, many of these systems are not interoperable and create cumbersome, manual processes in the staff’s workflow. While this may have been the status quo 30 years ago, it is no longer acceptable at a time when employees have unlimited technology, applications, and efficiency in their own lives.
Many banks still rely on Excel files, sticky notes, and finding old messages in their inbox. This leads to employee frustration and increases the chance of errors. A report by Capgemini found that more than 60% of bank employees are frustrated by lengthy, repetitive documentation processes. It also found that employees typically spend 70% of their time on operational activities and only 30% on customer interactions.
These manual processes and cumbersome workflows can be a drag on time and morale. They also make it difficult for tellers to serve customers quickly, which impacts the consumer experience.
Empowering Bank and Credit Union Staff with a CRM
These systems make it difficult for employees to perform basic tasks and make recommendations. It’s time for banks and credit unions to enter the modern era with a system and solution to better support customers and staff. A CRM with an easy-to-use interface and a full view of the customer can reduce manual processes, improve efficiencies, and empower employees to serve their customers better.
This offers several benefits, the first of which is greater efficiency. Reducing manual processes, back and forth, and the need to bounce between systems increases efficiency across the entire organization. Tellers no longer need to jump between disparate systems with multiple logins and formats.
It also helps employees better service customers. A modern CRM enables staff to quickly access all customer information in a simple, easy-to-use format. This enables them to better understand the customer they’re speaking with so they can personalize offerings and recommend the next best product. This results in an improved customer experience, adoption of more services, and greater account stickiness. An article in The Financial Brand notes the “promoter flywheel” effect, where engaged employees create better customer experiences, improving business results and leading to more workforce opportunities.
Finally, greater efficiency and more focus on the customer experience enable banks and credit unions to earn more value from each employee. Automating manual tasks frees up more time for them to spend with customers. As digitization and automation change the workflow, managers will have new opportunities to retrain, reskill, and redeploy between 50-60% of the talent pool that focuses on standardized rules-based processes, says McKinsey. For example, some branch tellers can be retrained as web chat agents. Meanwhile, with access to customer information, branch tellers can be retrained to transition from simple order takers to consultive financial partners.
Antiquated systems and processes hamper the customer experience and are a growing risk to workforce retention and recruitment. By adopting a solution that can improve employee efficiency and effectiveness, banks and credit unions are investing in the workforce and their customer experience.
