This article was written by Yael Warman, Content Manager at Leverate. Yael is a creative writer with a strong background in marketing and advertising. Yael has been a writer for over 10 years and has worked for clients in various industries as well as her own companies.
au·to·ma·tion
/ˌôdəˈmāSH(ə)n/
Noun
Automation is the technique, method, or system of operating or controlling a process by highly automatic means, reducing human intervention to a minimum.
Yael Warman, Leverate
When I was growing up, the only person whose job involved any sort of automation was George Jetson. Today however, automation makes part of the development of products we use in our everyday life and will continue to infiltrate industries and enterprises across the globe in the years to come.
For brokerages in the financial trading industry, which face challenges due to stricter regulation and increased competition, automation can be an incredible tool to help lower costs, improve conversion rates and in turn, increase a company’s ROI.
How, you ask?
Automation of the onboarding process can optimize every aspect of the acquisition and conversion process.
From the moment a potential client clicks on an advertising banner on the web, he begins a journey through a conversion funnel that if successful, culminates in said client making a deposit and trading.
A lot goes into play in order for a brokerage to be able to guide a customer through the funnel successfully. Call centers are set up in various shifts and languages, several no answers and “call me back later” phone calls are made, thousands of dollars in sales personnel are spent and it all may or may not result in an FTD.
Implementing automation as part of a brokerage’s onboarding process creates what is essentially a process of self-conversion, or in other words, traders who convert themselves with little intervention from a sales representative. When a brokerage implements automation as part of their conversion process, the need for human interaction between broker and trader is only needed at crucial decision making points. The broker/sales rep is able to follow the trader’s steps along the funnel and see where the trader may be hesitant, stuck or in need of a little push, and intervene with the right CTA (call to action). Rather than calling a potential trader while they are driving, in a meeting or dropping the kids off at school, a brokerage can contact the potential trader while they are inside the system, expressing interest in the trading platform, and can be certain that they are contacting them at the correct time, when they are engaged and their attention is captive.
By decreasing the need of human interaction required to convert a trader, a broker is able to reduce staffing costs in its call center, as well as expand its reach to new markets taking advantage of the availability of multiple languages. When the process of conversion becomes automated, response times to a lot of the customers’ needs are instantaneous due to a set of pre-set roles and messages, rather than dependent on a brokerage’s sales staff having to physically call a customer. This automation speeds up the conversion process tremendously. The automated processes can also take place 24 hours a day, which means a broker can take advantage of various time zones without having to hire additional sales staff to work in shifts.
If your brokerage is not yet using automation as part of its conversion process, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to increase conversion rates, reduce costs and effectively increase your ROI.