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Recent years have steered the insurance and financial service industries in a consistent direction: the need to create positive experiences at every step of the customer journey. As business moves faster, consumers increasingly expect knowledgeable sales and service agents who can provide fast answers and smooth transactions. Additionally, these customers want more from their interactions – many expect personalized service where reps already have their service history and product preferences in hand.

Your typical bank, insurer or financial services firm understands this quite well, which is why most have acquired a variety of platforms to manage workflows and help their customers complete transactions quickly. Yet this abundance of technologies has created a paradox. The increased ability to store massive amounts of customer data means this information often winds up siloed in different databases, repositories, or applications. As a result, many reps have to leave their Salesforce application window to visit other systems like claims management or accounting applications simply to complete a transaction – which can slow them down and annoy the customer.

Consider a customer applying for an auto loan through his own bank. The customer knows his bank has his credit card history, information on past loans and other financial data. In his mind, any rep he speaks to should have this information right there at their fingertips. But in reality, the rep probably does not have visibility into every system holding the customer’s information. Instead the rep will need to visit multiple apps and request information from other staff to process the application leading to a frustrated customer.

Navigating this kind of data obstacle course is time consuming and often chaotic. Valuable information can still wind up excluded from the interaction. When incorrect data is updated in one system, it is most often outdated in another. The customer is forced to wait for a resolution and the rep appears uninformed – never a good look for the brand.

Ultimately the interaction just isn’t as productive and satisfying as it could be for either party.

Enhancing Customer Success Through Integration

Apps like Intellective Unity have removed these obstacles by expanding content and data visibility within Salesforce. By streaming the right information from legacy platforms with the right integration, users can stay within their Salesforce window while viewing relevant information from other systems – including documents like old invoices, customer contracts, past transaction logs or records of complaints or initiating a process workflow. The rep no longer needs to hunt through multiple databases or backtrack and update the same records across various platforms.

Is it complicated? Not at all.

With Unity for Salesforce and the following tips you can quickly inject more value into your Salesforce application:

  1. Identify the records, applications, databases and content repositories that contain valuable information and give access to your reps with that data. Any data that can empower your rep to deliver a great customer experience should be considered.
  2. Map the workflow pathways for transactions that cross systems. If a customer begins one transaction, such as requesting an insurance quote, what other workflows need to happen before it can be completed? Decide which of these processes could be integrated with Salesforce.
  3. Be sure to consider any privacy laws, data/content retention policies and security controls that could influence where information can be stored, how it is protected, and who can access it.
  4. Once you know how your content, data and processes fit together in the customer journey map, integrate the systems that will have the biggest business impact.
  5. Consider all of your Enterprise systems including on-premise and on-cloud applications to be included to empower your Salesforce users.

CRM Integration in Action

Today’s customers have many choices for whom they do business with. Nowadays, customer experience is shared over the internet – whether good or bad. It is estimated by 2020, customer experience will be the most important differentiator between brands, overtaking both price and product; Source Salesforce. Improving your competitive advantage by offering superior customer interactions leveraging your investment in Salesforce to better manage customer experience must be a priority. Intellective Unity’s unique enterprise access to vital customer information and workflow capabilities can help you facilitate your customer’s experience putting you ahead of your competition.