Forrester Forum: some final thoughts following the interesting panel that I was fortunate to be part of. Host was Benjamin Ensor from Forrester in London. Participants were Ed Terpening from Wells, and Jason Knight from Wesabe. Some key points that I took away that I will spend more time on, going forward: – social finance as a lever to provide scale: personal advice cannot be provided, one on one to the masses. By providing a forum for customers to help each other, with some employee participation, advice and guidance can be provided to everyone – why do Banks trust word … Continue reading Why Banks are vulnerable in the long run, to social networking

Gaston Legorburu, Senior Vice President and Chief Creative Officer, Sapient, gave a refreshingly simple and interesting talk on the importance of brands. his blog is at cmorants.com Notes: – 96% of sales will occur without the search keyword purchase – Direct Mail: has been the engine that runs the business; customers are sorting mail into bills, and junk. We can measure ROI, and forgot how to create demand – brand happens everywhere; but where is everywhere? “My Reality” = Physical, Virtual and Dream worlds …. – deep rooted marketing processes for a world that no longer exists – marketing prices … Continue reading Brand matters |Sapient

Forrester Forum: Great quote from Jim Smith from Wells. “I think Banks have spent too much time measuring transactions online, and not enough on the aspects of customer relationship, and the impact of online” Technorati tags: Forrester Forum Technorati tags: Online Banking Continue reading Understanding the real impact of online financial services

Forrester Forum: Cliff Condon did a great piece on the lessons from Europe that US Banks could learn. Increasingly there is a sense, that I would support, that North American Banks are involved in a “me too” environment, and no levering and learning from the online channel. Within that view, there is also an apparent learning to be had from the Canadian Banks. I am less sure about that, but Cliff’s piece on European Banks really set a whole new level to consider. Hence his tagline, “Benchmark globally, differentiate locally”. Some stats – % of customers using online banking: Sweden … Continue reading Benchmark globally, diferentiate locally

During a disucssion on brand monitoring and loyalty, the matter of not just listening and watching online conversations about your brand, but participating in the conversation came up. Answer from a respectable Bank was that this would not be helpful, and in fact might actually hurt. General murmurs and nodding heads throughout confirmed this is the right approach. hmmmm … what will it take to get Banks to participate??? forrester, financeforum, Social Computing,Brand Management Continue reading Particpating in online blog conversations is not useful #@!%

Peter Kim from Forrester provides more detail on the Customer Experience keynote. Forrester Marketing blog forrester, financeforum Continue reading Turning Customer Experience Into A Competitive Weapon

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’