How to Improve Customer Service in the Banking Industry

After just one or two negative interactions with a financial services organization, customers might choose to take their business elsewhere.

If this happens enough times, it can cause great losses to your organization. How can you create consistency in how your frontline staff interacts with customers and help ensure that customers are happy with a majority of interactions? Soft skills like smiling, making eye contact, and light conversation with customers are necessary skills, and like more technical skills, they can also be taught. To improve customer service in the banking industry, it is necessary to train your frontline on how to effectively interact with customers.

Here are some steps that bank tellers and other frontline staff can take to improve customer service.

1. Connect with customers by acknowledging them as soon as they enter the branch. Smile, make eye contact, and remember to ask for and use the customer’s name.
2. Ask “How can I help you?” Then, show the customer that you truly care about finding the best possible solution by asking further questions as needed.
3. Listen to your customer’s responses, and think about whether there are any additional opportunities to help him or her with products or services offered by your financial institution.
4. Once you are sure of the best course of action, handle the transaction quickly and accurately. Give the customer a summary of what you have done and what he or she can expect as a result. Transparency helps build trust with the customer.
5. Ask if there’s anything else you can do, and if so, go through the process of uncovering and clarifying needs before again handling the transaction quickly and accurately.
6. Remember to make eye contact and thank the customer before moving on to the next one.

Courses such as Creating Customer Connections teach your tellers and frontline staff how to expand upon these fundamental skills  in order to create exceptional customer experiences that differentiate your organization and result in quality referrals to your other lines of business.

 Banking, Personal, Sales, Training