Financial Marketing and Cross Selling Blog
How Can Banks Use Social Media to Improve Customer Service?
What does customer service mean to you? Personally when I think of customer service, I can’t help but have my thoughts be overshadowed by frustrating experiences, automated call services and plenty of dead ends. If you provide any product or service, no matter what it may be, you have to be 100% dedicated to assist your customers when something goes wrong. You can’t simply provide a service and then turn a cold shoulder on your customers when something goes wrong. Customer service is a HUGE factor in how your brand is viewed and when your customers need help with your products or services, they should be able to count on you to provide them the information that will help them, which in turn will increase their loyalty to you in the long run. You may be reading this now and thinking that the connotations attached to a brand’s customer service is something that is hard to change. However, I was recently involved in a scenario with a certain internet service provider that left me utterly amazed.
REWORK: Recommended Book For Bank Marketing and Management
How can a business book written by the founders of a small software development company be applicable to bank executive and marketing professionals? I asked myself the same question. REWORK was written by Jason Fried and David Heinemenier Hansson, the founders of 37Signals, a company that has created several products that help teams work together more effectively. For bankers, conventional ideas and methodologies aren’t what separate you from your competitors. Most often it’s your ability to be open-minded to new ways of thinking and putting them to work…or sometimes reworking them entirely.
Prior to reading REWORK, I was somewhat familiar with the company 37signals and the products they developed but never really knew their background. For most that have never heard of 37signals, they are a small software company that have developed a number of web-based apps for collaboration, information sharing and project management which are now used by millions around the world.
REWORK provides the reader with the insight into the attitudes of the founders and a basis for the reasons for their success. As a designer & developer myself, I wasn’t sure how their philosophies and ideas could really be applied to the large scale audience but they certainly managed to do so from my perspective. If you subscribe to conventional wisdom, this book may not be for you because the authors tend go against your experience and what has been instilled into you during your college and post-collegiate years. Nonetheless, this is a worthwhile book, for everyone from the single self-employed individual, the small business owner, all the way up to the larger institution management and marketing professionals.
A Lesson in Sales for Banks – Education Works Wonders
This story goes back to the mid 90’s but I will never forget it. It was a Saturday morning and I was standing in the kitchen when the phone rang. (This was before the “do not call” lists that we have today.) My young daughter answered and said, “Daddy, it’s for you.” As she handed me the phone, a pleasant sounding woman on the other end said, “Hi, I’m from MCI, and I’m calling to explain how our long distance service can save you money.” Now flash back to the time that MCI was making inroads into the long distance business that had been dominated by AT&T by offering lower long distance rates. I had always been with AT&T. In my mind, they were the standard and I was not interested in saving a few cents per minute for what I assumed was an inferior service.
Having been in sales as a cold calling stockbroker early in my career, I tried to be polite in my response, but I also wanted to be direct. I responded, “For the past two years I have seen your advertising, I have had countless direct mail pieces show up in my mailbox, and I am really not interested, but thank you for the call.” As a sales person knowing what you’re up against in cold calling, I was absolutely floored when I heard her response. She said, “You’re just the person I want to talk to?” How could I be just the person she wants to talk to when I said, “No thanks”? She continued without hesitation, “Most people don’t understand one key fact about long distance... Read More >>
What does “Best Banking Experience” mean to you?
I was reading the recent ABA Bank Marketing magazine and there was a section interviewing a marketing manager at a small community bank in Pennsylvania. One question asked was, “In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge marketers will face in the year ahead?” Her response, “Maintaining customer’s trust and belief that our bank will succeed and we will provide them with the best banking experience!”
As I read this statement it hit me that this simple statement holds a lot of weight. I started to think about my own banking experience. I’m of the Gen X group so I have a tendency to be an online banking advocate, which is helpful since my bank is based out of Texas and has zero branches or ATMs in the Boston, let alone the north Atlantic region. I can even cash my checks using the scanner here at work. I’m a frequent online billpayer as well. So you could say my banking experience is one of transactions.
But I have yet to buy my first home, get married, have kids or own a small business. So my needs don’t line up much further past the typical transaction based services provided by my bank.
But what about everyone else. What about those who are married, have kids and are homeowners. Do they also see their banking experience as transaction based? Since we grow up, like I, with an experience heavily weighed towards transactions, does this carry over into our... Read More >>
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