Are Your Onboarding Practices Costing You Customers?

By Nick Papachristou and Sofia Ramirez

Banks and credit unions invest a significant percentage of their sales and marketing resources towards acquiring new customers, but often overlook the critical process of onboarding them strategically to cement the relationship and create optimal lifetime value.  

New customers represent the highest potential for bottom line impact, not only because of the direct value of their relationship, but also in terms of attracting additional relationships through referral, reputation growth, and social support.  

It is important for banks to adopt a customer-first, “best interest” approach for these relationships to reinforce the reasons why they chose the bank, instill loyalty, and avoid customer churn. The following are a few simple steps to ensure that new customers become loyal advocates of your brand.  

Plan the onboarding and long-term customer experience intentionally, and with a focus on surprising and delighting them. It is an opportunity to refute the misconception that banks don’t care about service and can’t provide a customer-first, service-oriented experience. Design the onboarding process to fit the customer - one size does not fit all. Adopt a segmentation-based approach to welcoming new customers based on: Demographics – age, family status, etc. 

 Product/relationship Deposits, lending, wealth Existing vs. new Types of relationships – business, personal or both Establish clear goals and metrics for onboarding investments: Wallet share CSAT/NPS Reviews Referrals Ensure that cross-selling is a secondary focus. Customers are leery of banks “piling on” during the onboarding process. Instead, adopt a more fiduciary, “best-interest” mindset and focus on providing the best experience possible.  

Assign responsibility for the relationship. Whether branch based, virtual or a combination, ensure that someone is thinking about the relationship and looking for ways to surprise and delight them. Focus on the 4 Rs of onboarding: retention, referrals, reviews, recommendations. Build out an intentional onboarding cadence:  

Day 1 – welcome, define customer preferences for communications, offers, etc. NO SALES

Day 3 – confirm everything is in order, subscribe to ongoing comms - newsletter  

Day 7 – double check  

Day 14 – surprise and delight  

Day 30 – 1 month check in product opportunities  

Day 60 – confirm quality of experience, survey for CSAT/NPS  

Day 90 – product opportunities, review, refer 6 month – check in Anniversary – thank you, refer, review, product opportunities - gift Adopt a multi-channel approach to managing the relationship: Communication channels should be based on customer preference.  

Use social media to support messaging, ask to follow  

Never underestimate the value of service: Inbound and outbound channels and initiatives need to align Invest in the tools needed to manage expectations and ensure their experience is legendary. 

Create incentives for team members to provide legendary service. 

Of course, every bank approaches this dynamic differently, based on their strategic priorities, the competitive environment, and the demographic and psychographic makeup of their base. 

Regardless, developing and implementing an intentional, customer-centric approach will drive loyalty, retention, wallet share and, ultimately, greater lifetime value.