Texas-based Frost Bank has tapped Allegiance Inc. to add voice-of-the-customer capabilities to its CRM approach.
Frost, the banking, investments and insurance subsidiary of Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc., will be using Allegiance’s CustomerPulse and ActiveSurvey tools as part of an effort to improve customer loyalty and reduce churn. CustomerPulse, an online survey tool, measures customer engagement with a brand using e-mail questionnaires, while ActiveSurvey uses more specific, customizable, online questionnaires to gauge customer reactions to particular services or company actions.
“Throughout our history, Frost Bank has focused on helping customers with their financial needs, which includes listening and being responsive. It is part of our DNA,” Paul Olivier, group EVP for Frost, said in a statement. “Listening to the voice of the customer is critical to driving customer retention and loyalty. Allegiance is helping us to integrate that into everything we do.”
“It’s a big deal these days to listen to what your customers have to say, especially in this economy; when a lot of companies don’t have the money to acquire customers through marketing, they need to retain them,” said Chris Cottle, VP of marketing for Allegiance. “Today’s consumer wants to give feedback in the channel or method of their choice. There’s value in collecting and managing unsolicited feedback that people want to make to an organization through all those different channels, so companies need to present opportunities to get all that feedback into their system in a very professional way.”
Allegiance’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) provides dashboards for monitoring customer comments, and it provides the data warehousing for managing all that feedback. All data goes into a single, central platform from which Allegiance can also perform predictive analytics. The system also offers case management, to make sure no comments get lost in the mix. If a customer’s e-mail goes unanswered for 24 hours, for example, it’s automatically forwarded to the supervisor of the representative assigned to that customer.
Cottle pointed out that the preferred banking customer has changed over the past few years, with more banks now focusing on customers in the early- to mid-20s. Customer engagement has changed as well, and customers of all ages, he said, are more tech-savvy and apt to be more vocal if they can engage with the channel of their choice.
“If you are in the business of knowing why customers love you, you are pretty good at keeping them passionate and engaged, and that equals revenue,” Cottle said. “Engaged customers spend more money, stay longer and more effectively promote the business.”
The financial sector is a key industry for Allegiance, but the company also is involved in the retail and hospital sectors. Frost Bank could not be reached for comment as of press time.
