Trust. It’s the foundation of, well, pretty much everything when it comes to relationships, including those between an FI and its members or customers.
So, we were thrilled to sit down and learn from one of the world’s greatest experts on creating high trust in a high-tech world. Todd Duncan is a Best-Selling Author, a Sales Entrepreneur with 5 million clients world-wide, and our honored guest this week on CRMNEXT’s Banking on Experience podcast.
If you’ve never had the opportunity to learn from Todd—we implore you—listen to the full episode, get ready to take notes, and brace yourself for some mind-blowing insight.
What’s Covered?
When it comes to tech & trust, the top 3 mistakes Todd sees people make.
- They misinterpret the fact that tech and trust are two separate modalities.
- People are not understanding the value of personal touch. As he says, “Technology that does not create high touch is technology that will not create high trust.”
- Most people undervalue the lifetime value of a customer, and they don’t nurture that customer base like they should. Todd puts it simply, “If you’re not in touch, you’re out of touch. And if you want your clients for life, you’ve got to talk to them during their life.”
Todd’s take on the ‘talk less/sell more’ mindset.
For our expert, it’s less about some “slick line” (talk less and you WILL sell more) and more about the actual relationship between an FI and their customer base.
Essentially, “Emotional connection is the superglue to trust and to member velocity, member consumability, and everything from a referral standpoint that we know financial institutions that don’t understand this are not providing.”
The power of emotional connection: how FIs can create true “wow” moments.
Todd believes that once you understand the connection piece, it changes everything. He points out that digital noise that is not personalized is digital noise that divides.
On the flip slide, “Institutions that turn down the promotion and turn up the emotion,” says Todd, “expand revenues, expand loyalty, expand margins, and expand the depth of products consumed by an emotionally connected client…Connection is the motherload. It’s the holy grail of influence.”
4 things about FIs and marketing that everybody needs to hear.
Our expert offers SO many fantastic details and examples around this that you’ll want to listen in for (seriously). But—to start—take in this fascinating food for thought:
- FIs think that just 13% of their marketing messages are unsolicited; consumers feel that 85% of the messages they receive from FIs are spam.
- FIs believe 81% of their marketing messages are relevant and useful; 84% of consumers say these communications are not useful at ALL.
- FIs say they are slow to respond to consumers about 25% of the time; consumers say that these businesses are slow 83% of the time.
- FIs (and other businesses) believe that 75% of corporate communications are personalized; consumers feel it’s more like 17%.
Room for improvement? Um…yes. So, where to start? Todd suggests listening with the intent to solve, not to sell. “This is not a sales strategy,” he emphasizes, “This is a humanity need. Humanity needs connection. People in financial transactions need connection… If we don’t have this, we have nothing.”
Bridging marketing and high-touch emotional connection.
You’ll want to tune in for all the details around Todd’s awesome personal examples here but suffice it to say: there’s real power in personalization. Slow down to speed up.
Net Promoter Score and the Customer Journey.
Our expert points out that if tech is hard to use, if it doesn’t provide updates as necessary, or if it doesn’t look good—any one of those three things in just the technology play can lower the net promoter score by a differential of a negative 118 to 121 points.
Essentially, “You can have all the stuff in the world—all the technology, all the automation—but if it’s not a good experience… then the net promoter score crashes.”
The role of convenience.
Todd’s stance on convenience is that it’s simply not as important as the experience. He believes that if the experience is high, convenience matters less. But if the experience is low, convenience matters more. “And you don’t have to be everything to everyone,” he emphasizes. “You can be what you want to be to a target group.”
Changing the world (yes, really)
Always our favorite question to ask, and we love Todd’s take. If he could change the world with one thing, he’d give people a “fail-safe recipe to create the highest levels of trust” with everybody they care about. He’d have you wake up every day “trusting yourself, your closest relationships, your faith, your potential, and helping find that in others.”
Seems to us he’s well on his way to accomplishing that.
Want to contact our expert?
Visit toddduncan.com, where you can download interview guides or sign up for his newsletter—all free of charge. He’s also @toddduncanofficial on most social platforms, and @toddstweets on twitter. And he promises, “If you connect with me, I’ll connect with you.”
Find this interview, and many more by subscribing to Banking on Experience Podcast on iTunes. You can also find us on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or visit our page on Casted.
