Benchmarks for Excellence In Caribbean Retail Financial Services

Table of Contents

• Executive Overview
• PROJECT BACKGROUND
• STUDY METHODOLOGY & BENCHMARK CLASS
• REPORT STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION
• KEY FINDINGS AND INSIGHTS
• Sales and Marketing: Focus marketing efforts on customer relationships and leverage all staff to execute marketing strategies to capture not only new customers but also increase the depth of assets within existing accounts
• Customer Service Excellence: Design all processes, both front and back office, to improve the overall customer experience and customer service levels
• Human Resources: Design innovative ways to manage people, provide incentives to ensure behaviors are aligned with strategies, and create HR processes that measure and align capabilities with intended performance standards
• Back Office Processing: Utilize technology and shared services to streamline back office processes, improve speed and accuracy and further enhance the overall customer experience

• PATH FORWARD
• Introduction
• Marketing and Sales Excellence

• OVERVIEW

• ADOPT A MARKETING AND SALES STRATEGY WHICH FOCUS ON CUSTOMERS, NOT PRODUCTS
• Leverage a depth-based marketing approach, focusing on relationships not products, to increase sales to existing customers
• Focus on the entire customer lifecycle, e.g., cradle to grave, and customize the product line to the lifecycle to maximize product revenue and customer retention
• Build relationships around your most significant products to raise customer-switching costs and make it easier to cross sell to them to increase wallet-share
• Utilize formalized account management processes to build lasting relationships and identify customer needs
• Clearly define market positioning both internally and externally to ensure consistent communication with the market and in-branch customers
• Employ marketing campaigns that are both defensive and offensive in nature to retain existing customers and acquire new ones

• UTILIZE ALL STAFF TO DELIVER PERSONAL SALES OPPORTUNITIES
• Train tellers and other frontline staff to identify sales opportunities with existing customers and make referrals to sales
• Foster customer intimacy through personalized marketing campaigns to existing customers
• Leverage mobile sales force to increase loan revenue, build long-term relationships, and improve customer satisfaction
• Take a "clicks not bricks" approach and use online banking and ATMs instead of additional infrastructure investments to grow revenues and assets
• Service Excellence

• OVERVIEW

• DESIGN CUSTOMER SERVICE PROCESSES AROUND CUSTOMER DELIGHT
• Create an intentional and consistent customer experience as part of your branding strategy to retain more customers
• Use specific language among the staff to reinforce the intended brand and convey a positive customer experience with the company' s mission in mind
• Provide a personalized service to create a memorable experience
• Assign an employee or several employees who can assist customers as they wait, encourage them to use the ATM, or otherwise expedite their service
• Organize your teller lines by types of services and level of customers to get people to the appropriate staff person more quickly and enhance the overall customer experience
• Redirect customer calls from the local branches to a central call center to speed up the in-person transaction response times in local branches

• DEVELOP CUSTOMER-ORIENTED EMPLOYEES
• Incorporate regular team meetings among the branch office staff to reinforce desired attitudes and motivate the team to deliver excellent service
• Instill a customer service orientation among operational and functional staff to speed up customer transactions

• DESIGN CUSTOMER SERVICE MEASURES TO ENSURE ALIGNMENT WITH CUSTOMER EXCELLENCE GOALS
• Develop service standards and disseminate them widely to reinforce employee performance expectations
• Employ frequent customer satisfaction surveys, including surveying satisfaction with the competition, to ensure customer trends are identified quickly and potential opportunities are revealed

• CUSTOMER AND TECHNOLOGY PRACTICES
• Motivate customers to use alternative electronic transactions rather than teller transactions
• Encourage customers to use technology at the point of transaction to improve adoption rates
• Human Resources and Management Excellence

• OVERVIEW

• STAFFING AND DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES
• Leverage both technical and behavioral competencies in order to hire the right people
• Employ job rotation programs to allow staff to experience different roles and a means to keep them engaged and retained
• Leverage alternate career paths to reduce costs and maximize employee contributions

• PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
• Link compensation to individual performance to motivate higher performance
• Tie employee and customer satisfaction directly to manager performance management processes, as part of a balanced scorecard approach
• Require responsible staff members to develop an action plan based on identified improvement areas to ensure that measures are used for continuous improvements
• Engage employees in regular goal setting for themselves with follow-up coaching sessions to keep employees motivated
• Employ motivational approaches with customer-facing employees to inspire world-class customer service

• TRAINING
• Leverage Computer-Based Training to improve training effectiveness and reduce training costs
• Use shared services and outsourced training models to improve the cost effectiveness of training
• Transactional Excellence

• OVERVIEW

• BACK OFFICE PROCESSING
• Use an integrated, shared services approach and move transactional activities out of the branches to boost productivity and increase the focus of the branches on the customer
• Use concurrent work processing (e.g., workflows) to create technology that will reduce paperwork, shrink timeframes and increase customer satisfaction
• Use OCR and imaging to improve check-processing speed and enhance overall customer service

• LOAN PROCESSING
• Exploit the loan process to cross sell to customers who have products at other branches and to learn how to better address their needs
• Use telephone-based screening and pre-qualifying for loan applications and make loan applications appointment-based to reduce customer wait time and decrease loan processing time
• Create an expedited application process for existing loan customers to shorten application cycle time
• Hold loan officers accountable for the on-time payment of their borrowers within the first few months of the loan to reduce delinquency rates