ANZ has doubled its retail training hours in the past year in a push to get staff up to scratch with more complex customer needs - and seen mortgage sales soar as a result.
ANZ has doubled its retail training hours in the past year in a push to get staff up to scratch with more complex customer needs.
ANZ’s half year results reported 150,000 hours of training in the past 12 months, approximately two-thirds of which was specifically targeted at the retail sector.
Mark Hand, managing director of retail distribution, said there was a need within the company to boost the skills of front-line sales staff.
“It’s about teaching our people to have better quality conversations with customers, so that they ask the best questions and they get to understand exactly what the customer really needs,” said Hand.
“We’ve taught them to explore and listen more deeply to find out if we’ve got a solution for what the customer is trying to achieve.”
The improved training saw proprietary channgels contribute 55% of ANZ's total FUM growth in March, as well as the majority of ANZ's mortgage sales in the last half.
A higher investment in training would be an on-going business strategy for ANZ, said Hand, to ensure sales staff have the ability to deal with increasingly challenging enquiries.
“Customers don’t come in to do simple transactions like they used to. The number of transactions in-bank falls year on year, but what they are coming in to do is have conversations on mortgages and small business and wealth.”
“We’ve made quite an investment on gearing our front-line up to be really well equipped to have mortgage conversations, but we will spend more money on helping them understand how to have all of those complex conversations.”
The training has not only allowed staff to better understand the needs of customers, but strengthened relationships with brokers too, said Hand.
“We make sure they can speak the same language and understand the brokers. The training from our point of view is more or less to make sure they can have the right conversations with brokers and help them understand what ANZ can bring to the table if they refer a customer our way.”
Concentrating on improved communication in these two areas is what has allowed ANZ to continue to grow their mortgage book despite a slow-down in the industry, said Hand.
“Before we were at the mercy of the market, if the market fell our mortgage volumes tended to fall too,” he said.
“In staying a good supporter of the broker network and reinvigorating teaching our people in how to deal with our customers directly, we’ve seen productivity improve in both channels.”
