Secret to RDC Success #5 – Educate Customers and Follow Up

Financial institutions typically think of customer service from the perspective of what they deliver within the branch. Yet, a majority of transactions are now performed with online or virtual channels.  While this creates operating efficiencies, it leaves the institution open to having customer dissatisfaction with online services while not having “face-time” with the customer to learn about potential problems.  And the fact is that most customers don’t complain, at least not to their bankers.  They quietly stew about it or gripe openly to co-workers or others in their circle, many of these are potential customers that get a negative impression about FI service levels.  In most cases, there are simple explanations for any issues and in my experience; most of these are based on user error!  Nevertheless, the FI that allows these issues to continue unabated will find that overall customer sentiment is negatively affected.  So what should you do? I suggest the following:
 
1) Provide initial education/training – The systems we deploy for RDC are pretty intuitive.  Most users can easily figure out how to scan checks and deliver a deposit.  But there are nuances in every system that provides a robust array of options for the RDC end-user.  Yet, most FIs perform little education to the very customers that will be “hands-on” with their application.  If a user has knowledge of only the bare bones functionality, will they know how to do a MICR repair?  Will they be able to get custom reports?  How about extracting data to update an accounting system?  All of these examples are critical functions that are important for a company to get the most out of RDC.  And if they are doing this level of functionality, they will be closely bound to your institution by their RDC use.  But you have to commit to providing this education.  It can be done onsite or remotely (using WebEx or similar online tool), but you should require every RDC customer to plug in to some education and training.  It will payoff for you big time in the long run.
 
2) Follow up immediately after going live – OK, let’s say you provide initial education and have deployed a scanner to a company and they are live, capturing checks and making remote deposits.  In those first few weeks, their overall impression of the service and your institution will be sealed with their experience in using the service in the first few days or weeks following going live.  Therefore, it is in your best interest to ensure that your new users are happy and using the system to its fullest capacity.  You should setup a tickler or other similar system to contact your customer in the first 2 weeks of RDC use.  Have a checklist of questions to ask.  Have they had any issues in scanning checks? Have there been any issues in using the user interface, anything confusing?  Are they using all of the features that will provide the best RDC user experience?  Questions such as these and others like them will give you a quick read of the sentiment of the customer in their early days of use. Happy customers can become happier when they realize that there are more features of the system that will assist in how they use it on a daily basis.  Customers that are struggling in those early days can be turned around to happy customers by identifying and remediating issues that may be just a matter of misunderstanding.  If there are actual system issues, bugs or other problems in making deposits, then you can immediately deal with that.  In every case, just the fact that you were following up with your customer and making sure that everything is operating properly will be positively received by your customers and should go a long way towards ensuring that you have a happy customer long-term.
 
3) Perform a survey 60 days after going live – After a customer has been live for about two months or so, they should have a solid grasp of the basic functionality of the RDC system and perhaps has expanded into more advanced functionality.  This is a good timeframe to do a survey of the customer.  Ask questions about what options they use and why, what functions they don’t use and why not, what functionality they would like to see in the service and their overall satisfaction.  This should be short; no more than 5 to 7 questions.  You can do a manual survey, but online survey tools such as SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com <http://www.surveymonkey.com> ) are so inexpensive and easy to use, that I would definitely suggest doing your surveys online.  Take the resulting information and provide any feedback that is related to the functionality to the appropriate staff in the institution that can remediate any system issues or get enhancement requests to your RDC vendor.

4) Provide annual (or semi-annual) education – It amazes me to see a banker express frustration over an issue with an RDC client.  “We trained them when they installed  last year; I don’t understand why these problems are coming up now”?  People move on to other jobs and then train those that are replacing them.  Do you think they show them everything you trained on in the initial education?  Of course not, they show them the basic functionality, what they need to do to get checks scanned and deposits made.  The nuances of the system are left a mystery.  This is the reason that you need to provide additional education and training on an ongoing basis.  It needs to be done at least annually, but I would suggest semi-annually as a good timeframe.  You can do this online; send out an email to all RDC users saying that you are offering additional training on multiple dates and ask them to select one of the dates that you offer.  Don’t ask them if they want additional training, use the “assumed close”, that is they WILL get additional training, it’s just a matter of which date/time works best for them.  This will help both the experienced users as well as those that may be new to the job of making remote deposits.  This also allows you to go over new functionality offered by your provider, cover any changes in rules / regulations that may affect end-users, remind them of procedures for safe destruction of source documents, and, most importantly, remind them to perform periodic scanner maintenance.  
 
5) Ensure maintenance is performed on scanners – As I talk with scanner hardware technicians, they consistently say that the vast majority of all scanner problems could have been prevented if the customer had performed the required periodic scanner maintenance.  Hey, don’t act all righteous, when was the last time you did the scheduled maintenance on your whole house vacuum or your riding lawn mower?  We need to be reminded to do this and you should make this a strategic part of your ongoing communication with RDC customers.  Scanner maintenance is not hard; it generally consists of running a cleaning card through the scanner to ensure that the MICR read heads are not dirty, that the image scanner plates are clean, and roller wheels are working properly.  Unclean scanners start to MIS-feed, MIS-read, and that leads to MISsed deposits. Cleaning cards are available from every manufacturer or you can get them from KicTeam (www.cleaningcards.com <http://www.cleaningcards.com> ).  You should provide these to your customers or require them to buy them and then follow up to make sure that the periodic scanner maintenance is being performed.
 
Education and training may not seem like the flashy, sexy option to make your RDC program shine.  Yet, more than most elements, your ability to stay in touch with the customer as they install, as they begin to get comfortable with the service, within a few months of initial use, and then on an on-going basis (semi-annually) will guaranty that you are staying on top of issues before they fester into major problems.  And you will hear great stories from your happy users about how RDC has made a difference for them in their daily operation.  These stories will fuel the sales team to get more RDC customers, as will your happy references.  And that fuels success that makes a difference to the bottom line.  I’m just saying ……