What motivates a consumer to purchase a product, subscribe to a service or expand their relationship beyond a single product or service with you?
Know. Like. Trust. Buy.
Consumers want to do business with people and companies that they know, that they like doing business with, and that they trust to look out for their best interests. Offering great products and services helps also. Using data to learn about your prospects and customers, to gather more insights about people’s patterns and decisions, and to personalize messages specifically towards the consumer can have a lasting effect on the way they view a company—and their desire to do business with that company.
A significant amount of effort and money are put into winning customers. The customer experience starts before someone even becomes a customer. Things like building a positive brand and performing outreach for acquisition efforts (along with any other ways the future customer may learn more about the company) can all be influenced by data. By effectively targeting your prospects with appropriate offers that speak to their needs—gleaned through the use of predictive modeling, geolocation or proximity—the messages and offers are more relevant to the consumer and therefore are better received, liked, and perhaps even trusted.
Data isn’t just utilized in one direction though. It’s not just the company seeking insights about their target audience. The prospect also uses data to make informed decisions and seek information about the company. For this reason, ensuring that customer service inquiries and complaints are handled timely and satisfactorily can result in a positive data point for consumers as they research a company on the Better Business Bureau’s site, through social media posts, and anywhere they seek out information.
Based upon the information collected at the account opening, the bank already has a wealth of information to use. But as that customer utilizes their account(s), information about where they swipe their cards, who their bill pay transactions are being sent to, and where they transact (online, in the branch, etc.) are all valuable data points used to distill information about your customers and learn more about how to speak to them and how the institution can help. Beyond that, appending data through demographic appends, trigger and life-stage appends, or utilizing predictive models can help with delivering highly personalized and targeted offers to help build on the customer’s relationship and their lifetime value.
All customers have financial needs. Be proactive. Know where your customers are in their journey and show them that you’re there to help them. They will thank you by being a loyal customer who will be with you for the long haul—for all their financial needs.