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’

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”