“It feels like this system was designed for management, not for me to serve my customers!”
Sound familiar?
If you’ve spent any time with relationship managers or bankers after a typical CRM rollout, you’ve probably heard a version of this. It’s a frustration I encounter regularly when working with financial services clients who implemented another solution using an implementation provider.
Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC) is a powerful tool, but too often, banks and wealth firms design their implementations for the system instead of for the end user — the banker, lender or wealth manager.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
The real cost of ignoring the banker experience
When FSC becomes another checkbox exercise — focused on governance, reporting, and data capture over experience — the fallout is predictable:
- Low adoption
- Frustrated frontline teams
- Minimal return on investment
- Lost customer engagement opportunities
Bankers are customer advocates. They want to spend their time building relationships, solving problems, and driving financial outcomes — not wrestling with inefficient systems. When technology gets in the way, both bankers and customers suffer.
At Atrium, we believe in reversing this equation. The banker experience must come first. When bankers love using FSC because it makes their jobs easier, customer outcomes improve — and that’s the ultimate ROI.
Co-creation is the key to adoption
The biggest mindset shift for any FSC implementation is simple but often overlooked: build with your bankers, not for them.
Your bankers know where the friction exists. They know the repetitive tasks, the redundant clicks, and the “workarounds” that happen behind the scenes. Engaging them early in the process doesn’t just create a better system; it creates ownership, advocacy, and momentum for adoption.
One large regional bank we worked with had suffered through two previous CRM implementations with disappointing results. When we partnered with them to relaunch FSC, the first thing we did was bring in 10 of their top relationship managers to join our discovery and design sessions. The result? A faster rollout and a huge increase in adoption rate within six months.
Five ways to design FSC around the banker
If you’re ready to pivot to a user-first approach, here are five actionable strategies:
1. Engage bankers early and often
Set up workshops, journey-mapping sessions, and user story interviews. Make them true collaborators from day one. Let them define what “a day in the life” should look like with FSC.
2. Eliminate click fatigue
Design intuitive workflows that reduce unnecessary steps. Automate repetitive data entry where possible. If a banker must click seven times to complete a common task, that’s six clicks too many.
3. Deliver real-time insights and guided actions
FSC should be a “coach” for bankers, not just a record-keeping system. AI-powered insights and next-best action prompts can help bankers prioritize the right customer conversations and solutions at the right time.
4. Build feedback loops for continuous improvement
The go-live date is just the beginning. Schedule quarterly listening sessions or pulse surveys with users. Actively prioritize enhancements based on their real-world feedback.
5. Leverage Agentforce to streamline tasks
Our clients are already seeing the benefits of Agentforce — the AI assistant embedded in Salesforce. It can summarize notes, recommend next steps, and surface relevant customer history, freeing bankers to focus on relationship building.
A real-world example: From low adoption to trusted tool in business lending
One of our community bank clients, a respected institution with deep roots in its local markets, faced a critical challenge: its business lending group was struggling with Salesforce adoption. The lenders felt the system was designed for compliance and reporting, rather than to help them build client relationships.
Many had reverted to spreadsheets, email folders, and even handwritten notes to manage deal pipelines and customer touchpoints. The result was inconsistent data, duplicated efforts, and missed opportunities.
The perception? “It’s just another management tool watching us, not working for us.”
When Atrium partnered with the bank, we started by embedding ourselves alongside relationship managers and commercial lenders. Through discovery workshops and journey mapping, we co-created workflows designed specifically for business lending — not a generic CRM experience.
The results were transformative:
- Administrative time was reduced
- Banker-reported system satisfaction rose
- Most importantly, bankers began to see Salesforce not as “big brother” but as a valuable partner that simplified their day, gave them better client insights, and freed up time to focus on relationship building and portfolio growth.
The bank now uses this reimagined business lending experience as a blueprint for reimagining FSC across other divisions.
It’s time to put the banker first (We can help)
If your FSC program feels more like an administrative burden than an empowerment tool, it’s time to refocus. Design around your users. Involve your bankers. Streamline their experience.
When bankers succeed, customers succeed. And that’s when your technology investment delivers the ROI you intended.
At Atrium, we know technology adoption isn’t just about good code; it’s about empathy for the user. We specialize in human-centered FSC implementations that blend Salesforce expertise with deep financial services knowledge. Our proven approach ensures that user experience, AI-driven productivity, and measurable outcomes are at the heart of every project.
We don’t just hand over a system; we coach, guide, and iterate alongside our clients to ensure FSC becomes an indispensable asset for both bankers and the customers they serve.
Ready to rethink your FSC experience? Let’s co-create something remarkable — together. Learn more about our expertise in financial services.
