As a commercial banker, you know that building strong relationships with your small and medium business (SMB) customers is key to driving revenue and retaining their loyalty.
But how can you go beyond the basics and truly engage with your customers in a way that builds trust and keeps them coming back for more?
The answer lies in data-driven strategies that can help you provide personalized solutions, streamline processes, and prevent fraud. In this post, we’ll explore four ways data can improve your financial institution’s (FI’s) SMB customer engagement, and share some eye-opening statistics along the way.
1. Provide Personalized Financial Advice and Recommendations
82% of small businesses fail due to cash flow problems.
Yet, with a fragmented market, SMBs struggle to understand their cash position, let alone know what they need to do to grow. Most FIs leave it up to the customer to identify their financial problems and pursue the right solutions.
How’s that for customer experience?
That’s where personalized financial advice and recommendations come in. By analyzing your SMB customers’ financial data, you can gain insights into their spending patterns and identify opportunities for cost savings and investments.
With this information, you can provide tailored advice that aligns with their goals and helps them make informed decisions. Not only will this build trust, but it will also increase customer engagement and customer satisfaction.
A proactive approach elevates your FI to a true, full-circle business partner.
2. Streamline the Loan Application Process
On average, a small business loan takes anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to be approved. Applying for a loan the traditional way is a heavily manual process, which means it’s also slow and prone to errors. It also takes your account managers’ time away from building relationships with their other business clients.
But imagine how this experience changes when you throw technology into the mix.
- Your client logs into a portal and connects you directly, via API, to their payroll, commerce, IRS, accounting, and other financial software.
- In minutes, you have all of the data you need to approve or deny the application at your fingertips.
With data-driven automation, this months-long process can be completed in just minutes. You’ll reduce the time and effort required to apply for a loan, increasing customer satisfaction and engagement—not to mention make the job simpler for your relationship managers, freeing them up to provide personalized recommendations to other SMB clients.
3. Protect Your Customers (and Your FI!) from Fraud
Payments fraud can put many SMBs out of business—on average, fraud causes small businesses to lose 5% of revenue annually. And if you’re looking to increase SMB customer engagement, spotting potential fraud and keeping your customers in business is a good place to start.
By analyzing your SMB customers’ financial data, you can identify potential fraud and security risks, such as unusual spending patterns or transactions that are out of the ordinary. You can notify your customers of suspicious activity and take proactive measures to prevent fraud. By keeping your SMB customers’ financial assets safe, you can build trust and increase engagement.
But fraud isn’t just a risk for your customers—it’s a risk for your financial institution, too.
SMB lending fraud is on the rise. In fact, according to a 2023 SMB Lending Fraud Study, this type of fraud increased by 14.5% in 2022, compared to just 6.9% in 2021.
With a direct line of sight into your SMB customers’ financial statistics, you make it impossible for them to misrepresent their numbers, keeping your FI safe from lending fraud.
4. Run Targeted Marketing Campaigns
It’s no secret that, especially in today’s age of hyper-personalization, the more targeted a sales or marketing campaign is, the better success it’ll have. By leveraging your SMB customers’ financial data, you can create campaigns that offer products and services that are relevant to their needs at any given moment.
For example, you can:
- target businesses that have taken out a loan and offer them a discount on a business credit card,
or
- identify customers who have a history of high travel expenses and offer them a rewards program that includes airline miles or hotel points.
By providing personalized promotions, you can offer those customers the right solution at the right time, increasing customer engagement and driving revenue growth for both of you.
Revolutionize Your SMB Customer Engagement with Data
Data-driven strategies are the key to boosting SMB customer engagement and driving revenue growth for your financial institution.
By providing personalized financial advice and recommendations, fraud prevention measures, a streamlined loan application process, and targeted marketing campaigns, you can demonstrate your value as a trusted advisor and true partner and build long-term relationships with your SMB customers.
The best part? Everyone wins. Your small business customers can better target their growth strategy with this data. And when your customers grow, your FI grows, too.
Boss Insights will be your data & insights partner. Our award-winning, global leading platform offers a universal API to accounting, banking, sales, payroll, tax data & insights on the data so you can empower your business clients’ growth. Fill out the form below or book a demo to learn more.