How to win if you're selling financial services or mortgages
- by Know Your Market
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- 20 Jun, 2021
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Trust is a Must in Financial Services CX
Financial Services may seem like a dry, matter of fact, transactional industry; in reality, the opposite is true. Yes, there is a lot of financial data and complex product information involved, which must be communicated and explained to customers, but the most important aspect of their customer experience is “Do I trust this person?”
And whilst mortgage applications might be red hot this week, you can't take sales success for granted. Here's some key advice on how to make sure you've got a winning customer experience:
It’s a Journey, not a Transaction
The process of buying a mortgage, life insurance or pension product is an emotional customer journey. Each touchpoint or transaction along the process is individually important but it’s essential for a successful financial services organisation that you consider the whole process and map that journey in its entirety. Only by taking a holistic view can you really empathise with the customer and their changing needs and emotions. If a customer feels that you understand their dreams and aspirations (even sub-consciously) you become their trusted partner, not just for this transaction, but potentially for life. Trust improves the stickiness of your products and fosters multiple product buy-in.
Take Time to Put Customers at Ease
The practical steps involved in applying for a mortgage or other financial product necessitate asking intrusive questions of the customer. People are often uncomfortable with talking about money. They fear judgement over what they choose to spend their money on and what store card or credit card debt they might have. Enabling the customer to feel comfortable and at ease when discussing these details is essential to building trust.
Flexible Fit and Personalisation
Nowadays, with a changing employment landscape (Coronavirus uncertainty, gig economy, zero hours contracts, portfolio careers), customers require support and guidance more than ever to help them select a product that works for them and for which they will be able to make a successful application. Buying a financial product is no longer just about getting the numbers right and a one-size fits all product. Customers want tailored, customised solutions that work for them. Taking time to get to know and understand customers’ lifestyles and individual circumstances builds rapport, and guess what, trust.
The Solution
So how can your organisation deliver a customer experience that builds and maintains trust? Mystery shopping is a flexible, real-life research tool, ideally placed to capture how your customers really feel when they interact with your company, whilst also ensuring you are meeting your legal compliance requirements.
Key Moments
Know Your Market’s bespoke mystery shopping programmes focus on key moments in the financial services customer journey measuring how well your staff provide and gather information, show empathy with the customer, fulfil legal compliance criteria, and deliver a seamless customer experience. Interactions covered include initial telephone enquiries, appointment booking, face-to-face consultations and follow-up customer service.
Complete Coverage
The questionnaires are specific to each client (whilst incorporating industry best practice criteria) and can cover every aspect of the process including practicalities such as car parking for physical appointments and being offered a coffee, through to preparing you for what questions they will need to ask you and what documents you need to bring. It’s often the seemingly small things that make the difference in building a trusted rapport with a customer and making sure they sing your praises to friends, family and social media. The detailed shopper comments add colour to the Yes/No checklist questions, ensuring you have a full picture of how the process was for them.
Unique shopper scenarios and detailed briefs enable you to create authentic customer interactions across numerous permutations of lifestyle and financial situations. Measuring how well advisers deal with a variety of set-ups provides opportunities to improve the customer journey and increase staff awareness of the importance of a consumer-centric approach.
Tool for Training
Continual monitoring and feedback over time helps staff internalise the flow and content of a typical interaction so it becomes second-nature to achieve and tick off the practical aspects of a consultation, allowing them to focus instead on building trust and showing empathy with the customer.
Insights are delivered via detailed written reports, quality audio recordings, covert video footage and shopper vox pops explaining how they felt throughout the process. Multi-media report assets bring the findings to life and foster a dynamic learning environment for frontline staff, independent advisers and managers alike.
The next stage? Having built that trust with the customer, make sure you don’t blow it now… And that’s a topic for another time.
