Phone: 970.481-7848
Website: http://www.deluxe.com/products-services/financial.jsp
Contact: Terry Davin

Deluxe Acquires Cornerstone Customer Solutions

Deluxe Corp has completed the acquisition of Cornerstone Customer Solutions (http://www.cornerstone-cs.com), a provider of turnkey, full-service direct marketing solutions to financial institutions.

This acquisition reflects Deluxe’s ongoing commitment to help financial institutions advance via world-class growth solutions.  The data-driven Cornerstone tools have been proven to enhance customer targeting as well as the acquisition, growth and retention of deposits.  Given the current economic climate, we all know that deposit health is a critical area for financial institutions.

Deluxe has been a strategic partner of Cornerstone for the past year and together we have positioned Cornerstone’s AGR solution as a critical piece of our overall Growth Services portfolio.  As part of the transition, Cornerstone Customer Solutions will become Deluxe Cornerstone Solutions. 

For additional information about Cornerstone or the acquisition, please contact your Deluxe sales representative, call 888-633-5893 or visit http://www.deluxe.com/cornerstone . 

Community Banks perfectly poised to be “Close To Home” Leaders

As the concept of recovery seems more and more likely, Banks are responding with an eagerness to increase their market share, sell more products and services, and reach out to new audiences.  This eagerness is offset, however, by the reality that things have changed. Consumers feel different about their banks than they used to, their needs have changed, their buying process modified. In an effort to understand, some of these nuances, Deluxe Corporation, in partnership with 15 banking executives studied how to best sell multiple products and services to Baby Boomers and Millennials in times of distrust.  With this question, we sought to better understand the similarities and differences between these two compelling generations, ways in which our approach to selling must change to be effective and the ultimate impact of trust erosion on banking behavior. After nine months of work and deep exploration into the attitudes and behavior of consumers, we were fascinated by some of our findings on trust and its role in the buying situation – how do you sell when consumers are highly distrustful of financial institutions?

Do Consumers Distrust their Bank?
Existing research on this topic overwhelmingly says yes, consumers distrust their banks. Our findings, based on in-depth interviews and observations with consumers, suggest the answer is not that straightforward. The oversimplified view of trust leads one to think that a person either does or does not trust their bank and that their behavior is tempered to be in line with that attitude. Deeper exploration suggests that while consumers almost unilaterally express distrust in financial institutions, those feelings of distrust did not necessarily extend to their own local bank or banker.

Attitudinally, consumers are organizing the economic situation and financial institutions, as a whole, into one general category and applying a macro, or distant feeling of distrust toward it. When it comes to their own bank, however, they are using a more personal, micro-level analysis to determine their degree of trust – was their bank mentioned in the media? If so, how did they respond and was it at a brand level or down to the branch? How are my bankers interacting with me these days – is there a level of openness that feels different than in the past?  Our findings, in fact, suggest that, depending on how you ask the question, consumers do trust their bank. And, that appropriate awareness of this dichotomy of trust and attention to trust issues at both a macro and micro level, could be the key to ensuring deeper relationships and effective sales in the new economy.

Cracking the Code on Sales
Recognizing the need to bank somewhere, and perhaps lacking the desire to move to another bank, consumers will actively search for reasons to trust their own bank, branch and banker. Community banks are perfectly poised to design for this consumer attitude, giving them a keen advantage. Specifically, consumers are seeking a “close to home” banking experience - one that feels excluded, but not detached, from the global economic and banking crisis. This is evidenced in two primary findings: expectations of openness and candor and unwillingness to trust blindly.

Openness and candor has sky-rocketed in its impact on the banker-consumer relationship. While always desired, it wasn’t necessarily expected. This tolerance for only modest degrees of candor has been entirely replaced by an expectation of openness. Consumers want the pros and cons of each option available to them. They want to understand the logic of the processes and decision-making behind the scenes, and they want to know what behavior or situation on their part could trigger a negative event, such as a fee or missed benefit.

This expectation of openness and disclosure is further supported by a shift in the consumer’s perception of the banker’s role. Before information was as readily available as it is today, consumers considered bankers to be in a position of superior knowledge. Not unlike our view of doctors, we never expected to know things our bankers knew and, we were comfortable deferring to them. The availability of information, coupled with questionable behavior in the banking industry, has led consumers to raise their own standards of knowledge of banking. They are no longer willing to trust blindly. While they still expect their banker to have information they don’t have, they expect to know enough to understand what the banker is sharing, see through inconsistencies and ‘scams’ and hold their own in a conversation with a banker. The astute banker will feed this new expectation by educating the consumer, in turn assuming the role of peer, advisor and guide -  and actively abandoning any approach that resembles the ‘superior holder of information that is not shared’ position taken in the past.

Moving Forward
While expectations of education, respect and candor are not new, their place in the banker-consumer relationship has increased to such an extent that the smartest banks will take quick action to change some fundamental ways in which they conduct business.

First, revisit your sales training. The traditional “selling” processes in use by most banks today are actually effective in making the sale. The problem is that these processes are working at the expense of customer’s trust. The customer buys a product or signs up for a new solution, but actually walks away less trusting of the bank and banker. While the consumer is able to conclude that the product or service is right for their need, the process falls short of meeting their expectation of what makes up a trusting relationship. When bank employees were knowledgeable, transparent, presented simple, targeted options, used real, conversational language, and disclosed all relevant points, the customer not only bought the solution, they also gained trust. This increased trust translates to a greater propensity to buy in the future and surface opportunities for a deeper relationship with the bank.

Second, fully leverage your branch. Contrary to general assumption, Boomers are not the only ones favoring the branch. In fact, while use of online banking continues to rise, both Millennials and Boomers prefer to visit local branches to solve their banking problems and ask questions. This puts the community bank in an advantageous position because consumers want to trust the people they meet face-to-face and are more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. Additionally, consumers want to trust the organizations to which they have committed.

In summary, the banks that thrive in this new economy will have recognized that the consumer is organizing their attitudes toward financial institutions into two related but distinct constructs- one at a macro, distant level and one at a personal, close-to-home, micro level. They will use that information to design the right interactions in the branch and enhance their selling approaches. These changes will be further rewarded by the simple momentum offered by the very fact that consumers want to trust their bank and particularly, their banker.