Charter Bank
Background
Charter Bank operates in and around Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Charter does business in banking, servicing mortgages, and providing insurance. The bank operates out of five branches, and maintains holdings in excess of $890 million. Charter Bank employs 280 individuals.
The Problem
As a multi-tiered institution, CB is able to offer its customers other services outside of “checking and savings” banking. Maintaining established leads, as well as handling and cultivating new leads was a problem for CB. While each established customer represented potential business in other aspects of Charter’s business, the means to tie-in the cross-sell potential simply did not exist. This, with the growing numbers of new leads, represented a production shortfall due to CB’s inability to efficiently handle, and share customer information.
Because CB can offer its customers various services, different departments of the institution must work together. The only holdback to this system of operation would come from the inability to share information effectively and efficiently. Charter Bank was in the unfortunate situation of relying upon a paper system for all of their contact and referral based business. As leads increased so did the hours of sifting through papers to try to ensure that each lead was handled quickly and effectively. As the program of cross-selling increased the paperwork became unbelievable. Their “paper system” just wasn’t working.
As a result of a poor information taking and sharing system, the sales staff could not effectively keep up on the status of their leads. No one could really measure what the status was on any of their prospects. With added leads came added paperwork. Individuals from every department of CB were spending countless hours inputting information into a common database. The process made it impossible to act with certainty or confidence regarding the reliability of information on any given prospect.
The Solution
With the implementation of GroupLink’s eReferrals, CB has been able to transform an outdated and inefficient information management system into a full-functioning information sharing system. The ability to move from a paper-system to a quick and easy information inputting system has transformed the way Charter Bank does business. Jerri Seaborn is the Information Systems Manger for Charter Bank. “By moving to eReferrals our business has seen an increase in productivity on every level,” said Mrs. Seaborn. “Due to the fact that our leads come from every where—telephone, walk-ins, internet, etc, the need for all aspects of our business to input and view contact information is very important. With eReferrals this is the reality.”
“Before the implementation of eReferrals it was virtually impossible to track with any certainty the status on any of our leads. Now we use this tool not only to input and maintain lead information, but also to track the status on any / every one of our leads,” said Mrs. Seaborn. “Because we have this set up by branch, and our employees have complete access by intranet it makes for seamless integration for all aspects of our business.”
“At Charter Bank we offer our employees an incentive program based upon our referral business. We have seen a dramatic rise in incentive based business with the implementation of eReferrals. Now when our people turn something in they can see with certainty where that prospect is in the process; they can track where their compensation is moving in our system,” said Mrs. Seaborn. “I can say that our employees absolutely love eReferrals. Everyone has immediate access to all business at the push of a button. This process has improved the way customers are serviced, and the way in which our employees can do their jobs.”
Conclusion
With the implementation of GroupLink’s eReferrals Charter Bank has transformed an outdated and time-sapping referral system into a state-of-the-art information sharing and contact management tool. By providing their employees the means to more quickly and effectively do their jobs CB has seen dramatic increases in incentive based business. The ability to maintain information company-wide has increased the means by which CB can pursue cross-selling, and introduce every aspect of their business services to their customers. eReferrals has transformed the way Charter Bank does business on every level.
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