Leading Financial Services Provider Cuts Costs and Improves Customer Experience with Comprehensive Customer Notice Solution

Insufficient funds (NSF) and the associated customer account communications can lead to costly, and often sensitive, situations for both banks and their customers.  Customers are faced with the uncertainty of meeting financial obligations while banks must do their part to alert customers in a timely and cost-effective manner of account shortcomings. 

Bank customers are bombarded with a variety of financial-related communications on a daily basis, but as this New England-based retail bank came to realize, retail communications are critical to maintaining successful customer relationships.  As postage costs continue to increase, this leading financial services provider took a step in the right direction with a comprehensive customer notice solution.

A Time for Change
With a postal rate hike looming in April 2007, the bank was beginning to feel the pinch when it came to their postage expenses.  Operating nearly 180 branches in New England – primarily in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island – the banks process for producing and distributing insufficient funds (NSF) notices was fraught with inefficiencies. 

The design of the bank’s customer notices proved inefficient and left little room for making the most of the customer experience.  It was previously printed three up on 8 ½” x 11” stock, then cut for insertion into envelopes.  The font was limited to all capital letters, and while using a letter format, only one notice could be included per letter which prohibited the bank from getting the most out of their postal budget.  At $0.36 per notice, the bank knew their postage expenses would grow exponentially as postage rates continued to rise. 

With the majority of notices produced in-house at the banks IT print center, the process of printing and distributing notices was costly and left little time to focus on how to enhance the marketing value of their customer communications.

Offset Postage Expense, Enhance Marketing Effectiveness
Once Standard Register was engaged, the bank began the transition to a comprehensive customer notice solution that would alleviate the burden placed on the bank’s IT print center while simultaneously cutting their postage expenses nearly in half. 

Now, with Standard Register managing the daily printing and distribution of customer notices, the bank is saving $250,000 per year in postage alone.

Furthermore, the unique double postcard application, coupled with a more engaging customer notice design, opened the door for the bank’s Marketing department and the opportunity to utilize the reply portion of the postcard for marketing or cross-selling messages. 

A New Wave in Customer Communications
At their core, financial institutions rely on the proper and efficient management of information, much of which resides in the form of widely distributed, printed documents.  However, once a document has been produced it must be delivered, and the effects of increasing postal rates are felt by organizations across the board.

As a result, many organizations, like this leading financial services provider, are exploring ways to offset this additional expense by bolstering print/mail efficiency and enhancing the marketing value of their customer communications and other key documents.