Long gone are the days of stereotyping the financial services industry as stiff and dry. Today, consumers value unique and personalized communication to better serve their needs. While Credit Unions, Banks and other Financial Institutions (FIs) have tended to be a bit slow at adopting Text Messaging, they are beginning to jump on the bandwagon to reach and connect with members and customers.
In order to outline why and how texting is effective for FIs, we have answered three key questions:
Why is texting among the most effective methods of communication with members and consumers?
Plain and simple: Consumers want to text businesses. According to a Twilio study of more than 6,000 consumers across North America, Europe and Asia, 9 out of 10 consumers want to use text messaging to communicate with brands. Additionally, 66% of consumers surveyed prefer to reach brands or be reached by brands via messaging over any other means of communication. A whopping 85% of consumers want to be able to not only receive a text from a business but also answer a message from a business.
Text Messaging in real time is extremely effective for responding swiftly to your customers’ needs. Given your members and customers’ increasing desire to communicate via text, it’s imperative to adopt this growing trend.
How does Text Messaging help stakeholders?
Stakeholders at FIs also reap valuable benefits from Text Messaging. Teams can easily expedite the often lengthy and tedious loan application processes by requesting important documents over text. Eltropy provides FIs with a secure link for document collection to ensure the safety of your members and customers.
Collections departments have also seen a direct benefit when implementing Text Messaging. Billing reminders can be sent over text, reducing the amount of time otherwise spent waiting on return phone calls. Recurring payments also unexpectedly creep up on members and customers. By delivering reminders as well as a means to collect payment via text, payment can be quickly collected alleviating headaches for both the consumer and FI. Promotional offers and special events are among the other messages that are best delivered over text.
How can Eltropy help?
While the benefits of integrating Text Messaging into an FIs communication strategy are clear, knowing where to get started can be difficult. This is where Eltropy comes in. Eltropy offers two-way Text Messaging in order to help businesses directly meet their members’ and customers’ needs. Quicker response rates as well as more purposeful and meaningful communication are among the immediate benefits.
Analytics are imperative for any business. Eltropy tracks 24 data points as you share information over Text Messaging, giving your FI insight into who is viewing your product information, how long they consumed the content, and if they forwarded it on. This helps your team prioritize the most highly engaged members and even future prospects. Eltropy’s Text Messaging + Analytics platform also archives all two-way texts in your CRM system to help inform current and future decision making among your organization.
Eltropy’s unique set of tools are designed to help improve your FI’s ability to effectively engage with members and customers in order to build trust and loyalty.
