A perfect example of customer loyalty | WordPress outage

2010-02-19 Colin Henderson

A key driver of customer loyalty is customer service, especially in the handling of crises and problems. But there are other aspects. WordPress for those that are not familiar, is a blogging platform. This blog is running on WordPress. Yesterday, late afternoon, WordPress was down for 110 minutes. On the face of it this would be a crisis. For example when gmail goes down, even for 2 minutes, everyone panics, predicts the end cloud computing, reflects on how this proves you cannot trust Google etc. etc. When wordpress goes down, here is the result. WP.com Downtime Summary Jean-Luc Crucifix February … Continue reading A perfect example of customer loyalty | WordPress outage

Open Source Banking, P2P Lending, Self Service, unbanked1 Comment

How much about the approach to Branchless Banking is driven by incorrect assumptions?

2008-01-242008-01-24 Colin Henderson

Johan picked up on my post about mobile loans, but interestingly pointed to an Economist article in November entitled A bank in every pocket? Mobiles bankieren in die EU. « – was einer so denkt – Bis jetzt hatte ich gedacht, dass das eine afrikanische Tradition wäre. Ich finde das ganz spannend. Translated:Until now, I had thought that this would be an African tradition. I find this very exciting. I have covered the African mobile phone market, and this article builds on what is happening there. These “branchless” schemes typically allow customers to deposit and withdraw cash through a mobile … Continue reading How much about the approach to Branchless Banking is driven by incorrect assumptions?

Self Service5 Comments

A new use of the Wesabe API makes switching banks easier

2007-09-152007-09-15 Colin Henderson

Marc at Wesabe writes about two companies, and their use of the new Wesabe API. I wanted to focus on one of them with a Banking context – BankSwitcher. Wheaties for Your Wallet » Blog Archive » LessAccounting, BankSwitcher, and the Wesabe API BankSwitcher is a service to help people switch their accounts from one bank to another. They just launched their site yesterday, with Wesabe API support baked in from the start. They use your Wesabe transaction data to identify automatic payments and deposits you have set up at your old bank, and to create a “Switching Checklist” that … Continue reading A new use of the Wesabe API makes switching banks easier

Business Models, Self Service2 Comments

The Bank of the Future | some thoughts on the world of cross-channel sales and marketing

2007-05-022007-05-02 Colin Henderson

Just prior to the recent NetFinance conference I was lucky enough to be asked by Dan at eStara to answer a few questions, which were posted on their blog. Its been a couple of weeks now, and thought I would place them here too. Meantime please check out eStara and their blog. They do a good job at covering many aspects of multichannel development, and not getting caught up in promoting their own products, which incidentally are good, as I can attest from personal experience. Anyhow here is the email interview we did, and I relate this to my earlier post … Continue reading The Bank of the Future | some thoughts on the world of cross-channel sales and marketing

Self Service

Financial Services Customer Care Centres lag other industries

2006-12-042006-12-04 Colin Henderson

In a rather damning report (dated Dec 2005) on financial services efforts, their Customer Care Centres are seen to be lagging almost all, along every axis, with the exception of Insurance, government, and Telcoms – three hardly known as exemplars. I would suggest that this is partly because they have not made the leap from Call Centre to Customer Care Centre, the second have cross channel implications. I see this tying into the need to develop proper benefit from CRM within Banks. The report does note that Banks’ have been investing heavily, so benefits should be expected. Despite comprising nearly … Continue reading Financial Services Customer Care Centres lag other industries

Innovation, Self Service

NatWest – Mobile Phone Top-up Demonstration at the ATM

2006-09-182006-09-18 Colin Henderson

Courtesy of Improving new account opening, this demo of ATM functionality. Now this is a good use of flash, and the way the demo is done where you actually click the buttons as if you were at the ATM is brilliant. Link to NatWest – Mobile Phone Top-up Demonstration tags: flash+demo Continue reading NatWest – Mobile Phone Top-up Demonstration at the ATM

Self Service

WaMu Shifts Strategic Focus to the Internet From Branches

2006-09-082006-09-08 Colin Henderson

Now here is a headline I have been waiting to read. Quietly online account acquisition has been gaining momentum amongst the big banks, supplemented by high interest rates on such accounts.tags: online+acquisition Washington Mutual Inc. plans to rely more on the Internet to attract new customers. The Seattle-based bank is adding more than 700 new checking accounts a day, CEO Kerry Killinger says. Driving customers to cyberspace to open and manage accounts cuts back on the need to open more stores — something Wamu has been doing with singular ferocity over the last several years. Source: BankNet 360 – TOP … Continue reading WaMu Shifts Strategic Focus to the Internet From Branches

Innovation, Self Service

"BankerVision: The reaction of bankers « Bankwatch"

2006-08-262006-08-26 Colin Henderson

James comments to the earlier post on P2P lending raises some interesting points. Also, banks have trust and security assets, branding and otherwise, which could go some of the way to addressing the 30% of loans unfunded problem. … And certainly the larger banks aren’t competing all that hard for deposits anymore, especially when wholesale money can be had more cheaply. Source: “BankerVision: The reaction of bankers « Bankwatch – Mozilla Firefox” The competition for deposits continues. HSBCdirect, BofA, and ING are all in a deposit battle, that brings both deposits, and new customers. Having said that, the best deposits … Continue reading "BankerVision: The reaction of bankers « Bankwatch"

Self Service1 Comment

Alerts 2.0: Interactive Financial Messages

2006-08-262006-08-26 Colin Henderson

The premise is that alerts will blossom into Interactive Financial Messages (IFM’s), and those will replace todays online banking sites. IFMs Will Replace Todays “Costco-Size” Financial Web Sites … Javelin views the term alerts as insufficient to describe these futuristic exchanges, and we now call them IFMs, or Interactive Financial Message Online banking is the Costco approach … presumably referring to bulk impersonal buying. Web sites will continue to grow as the place people get “Costco” size access to their finances, such as viewing and paying bills or manage the needs of multiple financial accounts.” Where the premise is off … Continue reading Alerts 2.0: Interactive Financial Messages

Self Service2 Comments

People come back to places that send them away

2006-07-092006-07-09 Colin Henderson

Fascinatingly simple post from Dave here. He speaks of Google, and how they have made a business out of sending people to the right place/ information/ source. People return to Google because they are a trusted objective source. Its stickiness by not being sticky. Scripting News: 12/12/2005 People come back to places that send them away. Memorize that one. Yahoo doubled their share of the online news market by adopting RSS and sending readers away as fast as they can. Who to? Their competitors, of course. Now the fundamental law of the Internet seems to be the more you send … Continue reading People come back to places that send them away

Bankwatch

PRODUCTIVITY Progress in era of Artificial Intelligence

Category: Self Service