Customers always expect first-class services and an individual approach to solving their requests and problems. This trend was previously observed only among the younger generation, but gradually, it spread to the older audience. Personalized services and an onboarding program are now a must.

Recent trends have also touched the financial sector, including various institutions that provide financial services, such as banks, brokerage organizations, insurance companies, etc. Consumers rightly and reasonably expect that new technologies will simplify and improve their interaction with financial institutions and help them achieve their goals faster.

Until recently, companies and individual consultants did not have such ample opportunities to develop high-quality relationships with clients. They had to use outdated technologies and disparate tools. But with the advent of Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, business processes in financial institutions have taken to a new level, and after Salesforce onboarding, consultants, managers, and executives have significantly more possibilities.

What Is Customer Onboarding and What Are Its Benefits?

A profitable business strategy in the financial service industry necessarily includes the entire onboarding process because when a business has a new client, it doesn’t mean that the deal is completed and you can relax. Ignoring the customer onboarding process eliminates the possibility of making more profit from the implementation of the marketing strategy.

Successful onboarding includes several mandatory stages, which, together, lead the client to a closer acquaintance with the product, help make important financial decisions, and significantly shorten the path from hot leads to clients with signed contracts and successfully concluded deals.

At its core, the Salesforce onboarding process is a series of training sessions that help the client to become familiar with certain product options, features, and characteristics. All this information is presented in an easy and accessible form so that even a beginner can understand what is at stake. So, onboarding leads to the fact that the new client gets the impression that he/she has long been familiar with the product offered. He/she sees all the advantages, parameters, and further development paths, and therefore, he/she is happy to remain an adherent of a particular (in this case, your) company for many years.

Thus, the introduction of an onboarding program into the workflow of a financial institution has many positive effects:

• Reduces the time from the first contact with the client to the moment of signing the contract.
• Increases customer loyalty.
• Helps to take into account the individual needs of the target audience and cover them.
• All these factors together inevitably lead to an increase in the profitability of the enterprise and the strengthening of its position in the market.

With the right approach, the Salesforce onboarding process is a surefire way to leverage reputation marketing and word of mouth. When your customers are happy with the approaches and results that your company offers, they unwittingly become your sellers, which is the best that Salesforce can give you.

Client Onboarding Errors

The fact that the Salesforce onboarding process is a must to achieve success in today’s reality is an indisputable fact. However, before proceeding directly to this process, you should pay attention to the most common mistakes that financial institutions make and  understand why you should not repeat them in your company’s work experience:

1. Inconsistency in the Salesforce onboarding process. A correct and consistent process implies setting up the customer adaptation chain, taking into account communication within the team, understanding clear end results, and resource involvement of all stakeholders in this process.
2. Selective implementation of the onboarding program exclusively for selected clients. If your company is set for success, the logic should not be broken at any stage, starting with employee onboarding and ending with the adaptation of all customers without exception, not just selected users. Selective onboarding harms an institution’s reputation even more than its absence because new potential customers know in advance that they risk being discriminated against by internal segmentation of users. If you offer an individual approach and a thoughtful entire onboarding process, do it for everyone, taking care of every client.
3. Lack of scalability in Salesforce onboarding where it is most needed. If some processes need to be extended, and you have to keep them out of date, neither the company nor customers benefit. The profit is lost, and the volume of the loyal audience decreases.
4. Lack of flexibility in approach. Some customers require active interaction in the Salesforce onboarding process, while others, in the meantime, only need intermediate support – it all depends on the specific product or service that people come to you for.
5. Reluctance to edit interaction scenarios. At first, it may seem like you’ve already created the perfect plan for Salesforce onboarding, but individual situations can create room for iteration, and that’s fine.

And most importantly, you have to understand: the entire onboarding process is different for everyone. There is no one-size-fits-all solution; every case is unique, and every financial institution walks this path differently. But most mistakes can be avoided with professional help.

How Does Salesforce Help Finance Companies Grow and Develop?

Salesforce Financial Services Cloud is a global tool that includes modules and business-friendly features. The product is aimed at active use by financial institutions in different directions. The latter ones may vary, but some processes are the same or similar everywhere. So, there are several key factors that have made the product so popular in the financial services industry.

Using Salesforce to Automate KYC

The Know Your Customer (KYC) task is resource-intensive and mandatory in multiple sectors. It lies in the fact that every new customer undertakes to answer a few important questions, and the company must organize these data and use them where necessary.

Automation of this process should reduce time and save resources for processing, organizing, and redistributing data. In the traditional approach, employees of the institution are engaged in this and other administrative work almost 50% of the time so that employee engagement is always a good and financially profitable solution. In addition, the customer remains satisfied since one does not have to specify the same information if the fields are duplicated so that the client adaptation process is complete faster.

Multichannel Automation

A modern user seeks to expand digital capabilities and gives preference to those companies that are ready to communicate using different channels, from telephone and email to communicate in the format of live chat, instant messengers, or even social media. The introduction of multichannel allows a person to choose any convenient communication method and feel that they are being taken care of, avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy. First, this will require not only the introduction of new tools but also employee onboarding.

Personalized Customer Service

Another reason to conduct employee engagement along with the use of a new CRM is to reconfigure specialists to the need for responsive communication with customers. Some specialists are experienced old-school professionals, who are used to those methods that were effective 15-20 years ago.

Consumers now have a choice, companies have competition. A person, when contacting the managers of a financial company, expects that his/her needs will be met, and expectations will be fulfilled. Conduct employee onboarding along with salesforce implementation. This will give you more real opportunities for development and successful competition.

Benefits of the Salesforce Onboarding Process

The implementation of Salesforce Financial Services, successful employee onboarding, and the application of new approaches to modern business processes take the financial institution to a whole new level. Key benefits:

• Automation of administrative work
• Visualization and tracking of the client’s path, understanding the main needs
• Optimization of the service process, reduction of the processing time for requests
• Optimization of coordination of interaction between parties
• Transparency of financial transactions and business processes
• Drawing up high-quality marketing hypotheses and forecasts

However, it becomes easier for financial institutions to comply with regulations with the implementation of Financial Services Cloud and employee onboarding.

How Does the Onboarding Process Work in Practice?

For the implementation of new modules and employee onboarding to be successful, the first step is an expert technical and functional assessment of the current work of the institution. Even before starting the onboarding process, it is necessary to determine how the company operates today, what can and should be optimized or improved, and how to do this using the Salesforce toolkit. Therefore, let’s view successful onboarding as a complex process.

It starts with a review of the current operations that are entrusted to employees, an assessment of the current suppliers of various products and services, and an analysis of the integration of the current services with cloud systems. Already at this stage, you need to seek help from experts in the implementation of the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. This person:

• helps you understand and form the correct adaptation strategy
• determines the key values and needs of your customers
• finds the strengths and weaknesses of current processes
• writes a plan for the implementation of new modules, helps employees adapt to new realities
• tells you how to track the efficiency of the service and when to start the next stage of updates

A culture of customer service excellence is a long process, which doesn’t always go smoothly or quickly. However, the results that it brings will definitely cover all the resources and efforts spent on this.