Texas Bank
Corporate Profile
Texas Bank, established in 1889, is a large banking institution supporting
550 employees among 24 branches, with holdings in excess of $1.4 billion.
Texas Bank relies upon 100 individuals who sustain and support its sales
efforts. Texas Bank’s IT department consists of 20 people.
The Issue
In the banking industry, enterprises rely on referrals to establish new
business in addition to establishing the groundwork for positive and efficient
contact and resource management. Once a potential client is encountered,
the process of competent communication and follow-up is critical to ensure
a productive business relationship for all parties involved. In handling
the aspect of contact and referral based business, Texas Bank was reliant
upon an outdated, and simply inefficient means to support this substantial
aspect of their business.
Many departments work in unison when handling the many areas of a client’s
banking needs. Prospective clients would come into a branch as a business
owner with several related, yet separate needs. These needs include establishing
a line of credit, creating a 401K or related retirement program, researching
and establishing company and employee insurance, and many others. Historically,
Texas Bank utilized a paper system for referral-based business—a
simply inefficient method for today’s business world. A referral
would come into any of their 24 branches, then the information from that
referral was sent to the appropriate contacts via hard-mail. The person
taking the referral information had no way of providing immediate information
to that prospective client, and the means to acquire that information
was lengthy and impersonal.
In addition to lacking the capacity to allocate a referral’s data
to the appropriate channel quickly and efficiently, there also existed
the inability to track the prospect’s position in the process as
well as the progress on any given level. The ability to fully service
prospective clients was missing from Texas Bank’s contact management
capabilities.
The Solution
LeAnn Capel, executive vice president at Texas Bank, oversaw the process
of researching solutions that could enable Texas Bank to enhance their
referral-based business and operations. “The paper system we had
in place for our referral-based business was cumbersome and inefficient,”
said Capel. “Referrals represent an enormous aspect of business
for our bank. The inability to sort and disperse, quickly follow-up, and
from an administration point of view—track the process in detail
as it was going along, left much to be desired.”
Enter GroupLink’s eRefferals®. With the implementation of eReferrals,
Texas Bank was able to take an existing operating method and enhance it
into a premiere referral management system. “The immediate benefits
of eReferrals changed our business’ ability to handle sales-based
operations for the better literally overnight,” said Capel. When
a referral is taken, the information gathered is now able to be transferred
to any or all of Texas Bank’s departments and its staff immediately.
Before, the person taking the referral would send that prospect’s
information to only one department, and usually only one individual –
that prospect may have had several needs from various departments in the
bank, but the process could only be done by servicing one area of necessity
at a time. This was clearly an ineffective way of handling clients.
Incentive Program
Texas Bank’s sales departments are rewarded for their efforts through
an incentive-based program built upon the attainment of quality referrals.
“Since the implementation of eReferrals, our administrative staff,
as well as myself, have become aware of a definite change in behavior
among our sales staff,” said Capel. “On the whole, our employees’
incentive pay is going way up. It is now possible for an employee to double
their salary in incentive pay, and some are.”
Before, the system for referral business was very slow, and to see a
referral from the beginning stages to fruition was no simple task. Texas
Bank’s employees are now taking referrals at a rate previously unattainable.
“One measure of our bank’s return on investment (ROI) is the
hard fact that our referrals have more than tripled since the implementation
of eReferrals just 18 months ago,” said Capel. “And, as a
result, sales have subsequently greatly increased.”
Conclusion
With the implementation of GroupLink’s eReferrals®, Texas Bank
has experienced a highly beneficial and lucrative change in referral-based
business. What was once a time-consuming and generally ineffective process
of contact dispersement and allocation is now a highly-effective information
gleaning and sharing tool, providing Texas Bank with increases in employee
productivity and ultimately, overall revenues. eReferrals has allowed
Texas Bank the ease of immediate access to customer information as well
as the ability to channel various dimensions of a prospect’s information
to the appropriate departments and individuals. The beneficial results
of implementing eReferrals were instantaneous, and progress and success
are improving on a constant basis for Texas Bank.
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