Three rules to building strong customer partnerships

What does it take to create a long-term, successful customer partnership? The kind of customer partnership that survives economic ups and downs and continues delivering benefits over many years, or even decades?

The concept of becoming a “trusted advisor” is difficult to achieve. For example, here at Lien Solutions, we work with financial institutions of all sizes and needs. There can be no “one size fits all” in the financial space. But, if a company is able to create a customer partnership with a focused culture, many of the tasks that go along with serving customers the right way go a long way toward becoming a customer partner. What follows are a few specifics of how to start that process.

1. Align with customer needs

In the current economic environment, when lenders are asked to not only reduce costs, but “do more with less” to stay ahead of the competition and deliver on the promises of business profitability, a partner has to show its customers how to be more efficient, help them mitigate risk, and help them leverage technology to improve their daily tasks. Alignment comes from continuously talking to customers about the best practices to streamline their processes, eliminate waste, reduce costs through automation, and, overall, become more efficient.

2. Innovate

The lending landscape is changing, regulations are changing, and lenders’ services and footprints are changing. To stay ahead of constant change, innovation is crucial. Through the steady introduction of new solutions and enhanced products, customers will find that leveraging technology and embracing automation can be their catalysts for growth and success.

3. Communicate

Actively listening and engaging with customers ensures that a partner can deliver the right sized solutions at the right time. For example, when a customer of ours, AlaskaUSA Federal Credit Union, was expanding to new jurisdictions, we enabled painless transition by leveraging our deep regulatory and jurisdictional expertise, our iLien solution, and our team of experts to help. When they were ready to move from filing and searching UCCs, we partnered on monitoring and managing their lien portfolio.

Building a partnership is a job that requires time and effort.