Automating Sales and Marketing Processes

How Can Banks Communicate with Their Customers?

Managing daily banking tasks has never been easier. That is the overwhelming opinion of customers who, today, can access a variety of channels to manage their banking tasks, including branches, self-service systems (Glossary) , online and mobile phones. But banks, which are under growing pressure to optimize their operations, are confronted with the question of how to maintain all these sales channels (Glossary) , intensify customer relationships and generate additional and drive sales.

The question is justified. After all, personal relationships between banks and their customers are now seldom in many advanced markets. In the U.S., for instance, only one in every three customers seeks personal financial advice from his or her bank. In the U.K., it is one in every ten. And while the branch employee remains the main source of information for 61% of German bank customers, some 56% of British bank customers now use the Internet to seek information about financial services and offers, according to a study by psychonomics AG.

The situation with standard transactions, however, is different. In around 85% of all cases, customers rely on branches and, in particular, on self-service terminals to fetch cash, transfer money or print out account statements – all without having to deal with a bank employee, according to a study by the German market research company Infas TTR. However, as convenient as these channels are for customers, not all of them are profitable for banks. One in every five branches, for instance, is unprofitable, according to the European Financial Management & Marketing Association (EFMA).