From Banknet360: Cross Selling on Customer Service Calls

Cross selling has increased in popularity as banks look to grow revenue. But does the marketing tactic really work?

Mostly no, and the reasons are well documented by many other bloggers. Thinking about it, some of the reasons are

1. Poorly timed cross-selling efforts. Attempting to sell the wrong product at the wrong time to the wrong person
   Example from Banknet360:
   A bank is offering a special on home equity loans. Customer-service reps are instructed by management to pitch the product to all customers at the end of support calls. But what do customers who don’t own homes think? Probably that “my bank does not pay attention to me.”
2. Poorly trained Sales Reps with insufficient Product and Customer Knowledge
3. Helpless Managers who have to rely on using brute force tactics instead of adopting targeted precise marketing based on customer history and preferences

Looking for solutions, the concept is pretty clear actually. Imagine this

1. What if you are able classify your customers into different segments by mining into your Customer Relationship & contact history  database (You need to build one if you do not have one already) ?
2. What if you have a classified categorized list of your various products that you are able to map to different customer segments?
3. What if you are able to categorize your service call, and your CRM uses this information with the Customer’s history to
   1. Determine whether to attempt to cross-sell to this Customer?
   2. Determine the most appropriate product to pitch to this Customer?
   3. Make the customer feel that you, the business,  understand him
4. What if specialized qualified Business Analysts are able to write, verify, update, bug-fix the Business Rules that drive the above Decisions taken by your CRM system?

Look at the cost implications here!

1. The cost of delivering bad customer Service
2. The cost of irritating customers with poorly timed & poorly targeted sales pitches.
3. The cost of potential sales opportunities lost
4. The cost of training & retraining your Sales Reps with no improvements or returns.

Well, said, but how would you go about solving issues like these?

Business Rules Management Systems, like QuickRules.NET, provide the best business friendly solution to solve such business problems.

1. BRMS allow Business Analysts to capture their Business Rules that in a wide variety of Formats like a Decision Table(Excel) , Flow Rules (in Visio) etc.
   This means that you, The Business, will actually be able to decide, specify, verify what you want your system to do!
2. The captured Business Rules are available in a almost plain English format, thus enabling flat learning curves and making collaboration between IT & the Business a lot easier.
   This means that you can now look into your system and really ensure that your goals & objectives are met 
3. Now, categorizing & segmenting Customers itself is based on a set of rules.  Business Analysts can now capture these rules using a BRMS in a form that can be consumed by their CRM
4. Again, matching products to customer segments and therefore to the current calling customer is based on rules. These again can be captured in a business user friendly fashion, and not as Code
5. The CRM system can then be made to call the Rule Engine, and the Rule Engine can apply the appropriate Rules, and make Decisions for the Customer Service/Sales staff!

Also Read

1. Rules Driven Product Suggest Service in The Games Banks Play
2. Real Estate Call Centers - The Business Rules Connection