The Financial Brand | The Secret Life of the CRM: How Banks and Credit Unions Can Get More Out of a Sales and Marketing Workhorse
By Nicole Volpe
A generation ago, customer relationship management systems presented banks and credit unions with a relatively contained proposition: Give salespeople and marketers a better way to track prospects, manage pipelines and campaigns, and identify opportunities to extend relationships. For many institutions, that remains the mental model.
But the environment around the CRM has changed dramatically. Banks and credit unions now compete with fintechs built for aggressive account acquisition and with large institutions increasingly able to operate with local precision. Their organizations have become more complex, with customer information spread across siloed business lines and third-party platforms.
These shifts have led many to see CRM in a new light. By bringing account and transaction data together with interactions and other “soft” information, a CRM creates a richer foundation for decision-making institution-wide. What began as a sales and marketing tool can support a broader range of functions—including by helping banks and credit unions prepare for AI.
Its most consequential uses may now be the ones institutions are least likely to associate with CRM.
Customer Service
Sales enablement may be CRM’s core use case, but service is where its broader value becomes especially tangible. When a customer calls with an account problem, the employee handling it should be able to see what has already happened, who else has been involved, and what remains unresolved. A CRM can provide that context by capturing service requests and prior interactions alongside the rest of the relationship history.
That continuity can make even routine service feel more informed and personal. “We have so much information that allows us to personalize that interaction with the customer,” Abrigo Vice President David Acevedo told The Financial Brand. “When I’m talking to my bank, they’ve got my information at their fingertips, and that feels more personal.” Acevedo was the president of 360 View CRM until its acquisition by Abrigo this spring.
The value can extend beyond the individual interaction. Institutions can identify patterns across customers and channels that might otherwise remain hidden. For example, a CRM can help an institution recognize that multiple disparate service calls about fraud reflect a broader problem requiring coordinated action.
Cross-Business Coordination
As banks and credit unions have added products, channels, business lines, and third-party platforms, the same customer may now interact with multiple parts of the institution over the course of a relationship. A CRM can reduce that fragmentation by giving employees across the institution access to a common relationship record. That matters when, for example, a banker learns that a retail customer owns a small business, or when a sales call surfaces a technical account-access problem.
Acevedo argues that this cross-functional role is central to a CRM’s broader value. “The value isn’t having yet another place to store information,” he said. “It’s creating a shared understanding of what that customer looks like throughout the institution.” Information about a customer should not remain trapped inside the original interaction. For a small institution especially, a CRM can help solve for a fragmented technology environment. “It’s not another data silo,” Acevedo said. “It’s a unified resource that everyone has access to.”
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To see the full article featuring Abrigo, visit The Financial Brand, “The Secret Life of the CRM: How Banks and Credit Unions Can Get More Out of a Sales and Marketing Workhorse.”
