Challenge
Customers want to know that their bank, investment firm, or insurance firm has their back. They want products geared toward who they are and the lives they live. Financial institutions that do not focus on their customers’ needs end up hemorrhaging clients and struggling to retain brand loyalty that is so difficult to capture.
This financial services company was struggling to increase efficiencies across the company’s multiple business units while striving to offer the best products suited to individuals and corporations to meet all of their needs.
As a company that prides itself on being a beacon of hope and trust, their main goal is to provide a solid foundation for their clients’ financial future. This firm’s goal is to make a difference in the lives of their clients and communities. Their products are designed to work for their clients at every stage of life, delivering on their every need or requirement as they grow and mature while empowering clients with the knowledge, skills, and experiences they need to achieve financial security.
The biggest task this firm faced was the growing need to implement digital innovation to assist and coach brokers in performing their tasks while maintaining their company’s “duty of care” – the idea of having the client’s best interests at heart.
With many clients with differing needs, this firm needed to ensure contact and account information and customer intelligence were harmonized across Salesforce and Microsoft Exchange. Ensuring the right products were offered at the right time to the right clients while properly understanding and managing the products clients have already purchased is critical to this firm’s continued success. They needed better analytics, metrics, and tracking for management to make better decisions and coach brokers on how to improve their performance and customer satisfaction at all levels.
Solution
After going live with Salesforce, it was determined that the default options, plug-ins, and out-of-the-box integration solutions for Salesforce and Exchange weren’t going to meet their specific customer care requirements.
The company chose Riva as the best platform to help them gather, discover, analyze, relate, and track client intelligence and relationship information to get the full picture of what was taking place in their organization. Riva allows this firm to visualize the detailed metrics they were looking to compile. It provides their staff with the efficiencies and ease of use to free up time in their day to focus on the client.
Beginning with insurance and quickly adding investments and retirement planning services, this firm now entrusts three business units with Riva to meet their business and client relationship requirements.
- Insurance – Uniquely Flexible Workflows and Business Requirements
The insurance division began with Riva Cloud to integrate contacts, calendars, and emails.
Insurance brokers now use Riva’s Smart Convert drag-and-drop feature to automatically create contacts in Salesforce based on emails received from interested clients. What was unique about this firm’s requirements was that if a contact could not be matched to an existing contact or account in Salesforce, Riva would create the contact in a separate holding account so brokers could verify the contact’s details associate it with the proper account.
- Investments – Advanced Salesforce Calendar Sync Without Ever Leaving Your Inbox
Next came the investments business unit. Investment advisors needed similar harmonization of contacts, emails, and calendar events in Salesforce – with the exception that contacts and appointments should only be created in, and synchronized from, Salesforce to Exchange. They looked to Riva to allow meeting requests (events) created in Salesforce to be fully tracked by advisors and invitees as standard appointments in Exchange/Outlook.
The firm implemented Riva’s event invitation mode for Salesforce. Invitation mode allows advisors to schedule events in Salesforce and have Riva send out the invitation(s) from their Exchange/Outlook account. This means meeting requests and invitee responses are fully and properly tracked and managed in Outlook and Salesforce. Meeting attendees receive a standard calendar appointment request they accept and decline the same way they would for a standard Exchange invitation (because that’s what they receive). Riva harmonizes the attendee acceptance, status, and attendance tracking between Salesforce and Exchange/Outlook. Riva drives advanced calendar event metrics, insights, and analytics to improve advisor and customer success.
- Retirement Planning Services – Access to Client Data Without Security Risk
The retirement planning services unit had the most complex business processes and workflows of all the units. It required the most advanced configuration to enable their brokers to do their job faster and easier.
In terms of contacts, the retirement planning services unit is divided into two sub-groups; operations and sales and distribution needed to have uni-directional sync for contacts and bi-directional sync for calendar events. This means investors needed only to create contacts in Salesforce and have Riva synchronize them to Exchange.
Riva applied advanced filters to prevent contacts from syncing to Exchange if they did not meet the financial institution’s pre-determined criteria. Role-based data quality filters ensure users only receive contacts relevant to them based on whether the contact is active in Salesforce. The firm also needed to ensure relevant opportunities and projects were available in each advisor’s mailbox folders for opportunities assigned to them. They needed the ability to drag and drop client emails into a project folder to have them assigned to a project and properly tracked in Salesforce.
An extensive notes section is available on the contact record in Salesforce that Riva makes available in the contact record in Exchange. This means users can access relevant client intelligence information directly in all Outlook email clients – including mobile.
Granular filters and advanced configurations allow intensive metrics collection and analysis for operations, management, and coaching advisors on customer care best practices. Previously, this firm had no visibility into the types of meetings investors were holding with clients. Now, with Riva’s help, staff members know which advisors have met with which clients, the types of meetings that took place, the topic of the meetings, and whether the meetings were in-person or virtual. And, because Riva tracks meeting categories from Outlook to Salesforce, advisors can complete the full client meeting life cycle in their email client – without having to flip back and forth between applications. Customer intelligence metrics are now used to ensure clients receive the right plans for their needs and that all contacts are being managed properly.
Results
This financial institution now has a highly successful implementation that enables staff throughout these three business units to work the way they need and expect to. Riva empowers advisors to deliver better and improved customer care and engagement.
Riva worked with this company to create and apply advanced Salesforce, calendar, and inbox integration, workflows, and smart business processes to improve their advisors’ and customers’ experience.
The sky is now the limit for this financial services company as they benefit from:
- full visibility into their business units;
- improved reporting, metrics, and analytics for coaching and applying best practices;
- automated, always-on calendar, contact, and opportunity integration and harmonization;
- salesforce contact and customer notes available in all Outlook clients;
- automatically sending and tracking Salesforce event invitations as Exchange/Outlook meeting requests;
- advanced configuration to meet their complex requirements;
- increased opportunities for targeted marketing and cross-selling.
This financial services institution was so pleased with Riva’s flexibility and advanced configuration options they are now implementing Riva within their remaining business units.
