PeopleMetrics just wrapped up our research on customer experience trends in the retail banking sector and I couldn’t be more excited to share the results. We collected feedback from over 70+ banking executives and 900+customers to gain insight into what banks are doing around the customer experience and what customers want from their experience working with banks.
We’re partnering with CustomerThink.com for an unveiling of the results on June 6th, so I can’t give too much away. But here’s a little sneak peak:
- Banks are doing a lot around the customer experience.
The million dollar question, of course, is whether or not this activity is leading to revenue growth. We identified four practices in this long list that growth banks are dramatically better at than their non-growth competitors.
- Banks aren’t focusing efforts on what customers care about most.
Banks must manage the dual pressure of transitioning customers to more cost-effective self-service channels, while still delivering against the priorities that customers care about most.
- Community banks are delivering the experience customers want.
Community banks are far and away outperforming their national and regional competitors, with an experience ranked higher than even the much-praised USAA! Even among the affluent, the younger demographic, and the tech savvy – the community bank experience is one customers can love.
Using this experience as an example, we were able to tease out exactly what it is about community banks that creates such high levels of customer advocacy. The insight from this is invaluable for banks looking to create an engaging digital experience. How can you build technology that makes customers feel positive toward their banks? And that’s where our co-speaker comes in.
Bruce Kasanoff, co-author of Smart Customers, Stupid Companies will be sharing advice on how banks can apply this new research to the design of their digital experience. Bruce is a digital visionary and we’re delighted to have him join us in the discussion on how banks can create consistently great customer experiences – both online and offline.
Registration is open now, and I hope you can join us for this exciting event.
Digital vs. Human Banking Experiences: Can This Be a Happy Marriage?
Thursday, June 6, 2013; 10-11 a.m. PDT
…and pretty much ‘on the money’ insofar as recent bank customer experience and downstream loyalty behavior research is concerned. Banks are beginning to recognize the critical importance of experience and touchpoint value delivery; however, they are still more focused on technology than on personalized communication and performance.
Your point about community banks and customized experience delivery is particularly well taken. My colleague Jeanne Bliss outlined the success factors of Umpqua Bank in the U.S. (http://www.customerthink.com/blog/do_customers_look_forward_to_seeing_you) and I have briefly described what makes Metro Bank in the U.K. (founded by Vernon Hill, who also founded Commerce Bank in the U.S.) so successful (http://www.customerthink.com/blog/are_corporate_customer_experience_intentions_overwhelmed_by_risk_aversion_and_other_roadblocks_)
Some major regional banks, such as SunTrust in the mid-South, also do extremely well with the experiences which leverage downstream loyalty behavior. And, reflective of the first element of your blog post, just today Jessica Sampel posted a CustomerThink blog describing how Chase had created an outstanding experience for her, actually eliminating her potential churn because of slow debit card provision (http://www.customerthink.com/blog/how_chase_delivered_an_enjoyable_banking_experiences_to_me)
One point of some exception in your post, however, is the featuring of Net Promoter Score results. NPS results are about as indicative as satisfaction scores, namely they represent more tactical and functional experience results and tend to be superficial and aggregated, and less monetarily directional, insofar as elements of customer experience are concerned. In advocacy and customer brand bonding behavior research for banks, where NPS scores were also generated as a parallel metric, I’ve observed major differences in results between NPS and customer brand bonding results:
– In terms of assets held with the bank, bonded customers had 23% more when compared to NPS Promoters
– In terms of likelihood to remain a customer, which is a major and traditional experience performance metric for banks, bonded customers were 28% more likely to keep their accounts when compared to NPS Promoters
– In terms of willingness to invest in bank stock offerings, a significant reflection of experience, trust, and confidence, bonded customers were 54% more likely to do so when compared to NPS Promoters
In sum, brand bonding behavior reflects considerably more monetizing and actionable behavior, an identified end goal of bank (or, indeed, any enterprise) customer experience optimization.
…but, as your research indicates, there is often a significant gap in bank marketing between the enterprise and the customer. Bank research I’ve conducted, especially around the impact of reputation and image, echoes findings in your second major point: http://www.customerthink.com/article/corporate_reputation_and_advocacy_linkage
I wanted to make this a post-script to my earlier comment, because the concept and effect of perceived trust is often missed, or downplayed, in bank customer research. It’s a critical element of customer experience.