Have you watched the video above? Did it pull at your heart-strings and give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside for financial services? It did for me. But then I got to thinking…sure you might be tempted to switch your banking to TD if these are the kind of rewards available but in the cold light of marketing for YouTube day, this is a (viral) video capturing the delightful customer experiences of a handful of TD customers, in one location, thanks to a custom built ATM.
TD Canada Trust operates 2,800 ATMs in Canada and 1,900 in the US so consider how this customer experience exercise might not scale and delight all customers consistently. Of course the over-arching message of the video is that caring for customers is essential and taking time to understand their individual preferences and needs can convert to a greater and longer relationship but maybe it even causes friction among more envious customers that didn’t get treated in the same way. The comments below the original YouTube submission certainly provide a platform for a mixture of brand anticipated ‘Thank you’ comments but also complaints from customers that did not get teary-eyed over the video.
Do you think customer experiences should be remarkable at every opportunity and become the standard practice, not an exceptional exception for the lucky few?
Image: Underwaterguy
I do not think that customer experiences should be remarkable at every opportunity and become the standard practice. Having said this, I also think however that customer experiences should not be an exceptional exception for the lucky few – but it should be recurrent for most as possible. The reason being, the customer experience is largely depend upon his expectation from the product / service. If the expectation is very high (irrational / unreasonable), it would unlikely be met and it could cause dissatisfaction. Here, sometimes it is unwise to explain the customer that his expectation is unreasonable and cannot be fulfilled. It could even lead to more displeasure. For example, in product support services, many times the customer mistake contracted product support service for a training. Well, support service and training are two different professional activities. I think the goal should be to make more and more satisfied customers; to convert the best of services into a standard practice. The remarkable thing would always be to make an unsatisfied customer a satisfied one at the next opportunity.