Forrester Forum: Its always good news when your biggest problem is the easiest to fix … or at least you would think so. Forrester just released a new survey in conjunction with American Banker. Bank executives were asked, what are the significant obstacles to improving the customer experience that your company delivers. 47-52% reported that “lack of a clear customer experience strategy” was a significant obstacle, and that percentage made it the most pervasive obstacle. Its not good when you can’t even describe the strategy to yourself. Technorati tags: Customer Experience, forrester, financeforum Continue reading Lack of a clear customer experience strategy forms largest obstacle!

Ed from Wells just pointed this site out to me. Its a beta entertainment blog, run by American Express. http://www.entertainmentaccessspotlight.com/ Entertainment Access Spotlight (SM) is a beta site created by American Express ® and partners featuring the best in weekly entertainment in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. All of the content on this site is developed independent of American Express. Technorati tags: American Express Continue reading Entertainment Access Spotlight | American Express blog

Am attending the Forrester Research Financial Forum, and it turns out this is the 10th anniversary. Its interesting to reflect on the evolution of the forum through channel, marketing, organisation, to todays theme of customer experience. It has been a long time coming. Bruce Tempkin spoke of three key elements. – obsess about customer needs – re-inforce brand with every interaction – treat customer experience as a competence “Interacting with target customers in a manner that consistently builds loyalty” One example given was the Disney family cell phone. It has online preferences, where the parent set the phone to turn … Continue reading Forrester | ‘Experience Based Differentiation’

This is a great post from Doug at FORUM. The reality is that it is really hard to automate account opening. I have been there, and the first steps involving a web front end, and manual back end, will in fact drive cost. Online Account Opening – Is it possible to make your Web site work harder? B – Boeing Employees Credit Union and Fairfax County Credit Union shared their experiences in this area. I was impressed with their honesty in what was and wasn’t working. It was a bit of a commercial for UMonitor and Andera – both solid … Continue reading Online account opening is difficult to automate

Jean at Javelin makes a classic point here. Information is free flowing online, and free. What makes Banks think they can talk about their own services, costs, products, and channels in isolation? I came across an article today on Yahoo!Finance providing advice to consumers as to how to reduce fees from their banks. The information is basic, but relevant as consumers are definitely preoccupied about fees. Web sites are information vehicles, not bank branches. Technorati tags: Online Banking Continue reading “Don’t Let Someone Else Take the Chance to Educate Your Customers”

This is a great post from Cam and FORUM, describing the conundrum they encountered when designing a customer centric system, and coming to the realisation that it doesn’t fit with product centric systems that were each designed to be customer centric in and of themselves. Consider, a customer address in the DDA system, and a customer address in the loan system; which one wins? Which address goes into the CRM system? The core processing system was account based and the CRM was person based. Oh boy! We were trying fit a square peg in a round hole. Source: FORUM I … Continue reading Customer centric technology problems in Banks and Credit Unions

This industry paper contained in Suntec’s press release, is interesting because it highlights the reality that core banking systems are not designed for today’s banking realities. The paper posits that a core banking solution per se cannot cater to all the fee-based income needs of a bank, due to the complex siloed nature of most mature banking enterprises. In consequence, a pricing and billing solution that helps to manage the fee income by providing a single customer view of all charges across the bank’s product silos, becomes inevitable for the functioning of a bank. Source: Finextra Technorati tags: Banking Strategy Continue reading SunTec Business Solutions explores the value of core banking versus pricing and billing systems in the modern bank

Web presence reflects a significant opportunity to improve loyalty. That’s what I infer from this detailed survey of several industries call centres. Forty-two percent of banking customers who call the customer service center try to solve their issue via another channel first, the vast majority (90%) of them going to the website before calling. Source: CFI Group Banking call centres fair much better than most, ranking right behind retail catalogue centres, and much better than cell phone companies. • Catalog Call Centers: 80 • Banking Call Centers: 77 • Cell Phone Service Call Centers: 69 • Cable and Satellite Television … Continue reading Web presence reflects a significant opportunity to improve loyalty

Thanks to Donald for this data from Holland (file is Dutch) indicating majority of Dutch customers do not use branches using internet (& telephone) exclusively. Recent research by CapGemini in the Netherlands outlines that 54 % of the customers do not visit their bank branch any more and exclusively use internet and telephone to stay in touch and execute transactions. See: http://www.nl.capgemini.com/m/nl/n/pdf_Onderscheidend_vermogen_voor_banken_noodzakelijk_voor_binden_van_klanten.pdf Source; commentscomments Technorati tags: Online Banking Continue reading Holland | 54 % of the customers do not visit their bank branch