Contributor: Dean Young
I have been travelling recently, conducting a series of meetings and interviews with customers and prospects from around the globe and there seemed to be a common theme – everyone is excited and investing in mobile channels. But is this at the expense of our traditional face-to-face channels?
One interesting piece of feedback I heard during my travels was related to the empowerment of the bank’s customers from an information point of view. The gist of the comment was that with all the attention and focus that the bank had been giving to mobile banking channels (the Internet and mobile), it was these systems and not the internal systems used by banking staff that were providing richer, more detailed customer information to the bank. The perception felt, was that the bank was investing more in customer education via the Web than on staff education via internal training. Hence staff felt unprepared to face customers, and certainly not confident enough to start to up-sell or cross sell to those customers.
I think this comment touches on the two main pillars of good customer management; customer experience and customer relationships.
Firstly, the customer experience. No matter what individual elements you believe are important, basically the customer experience comes down to being judged on the outcome of an interaction between the bank and the customer. At some stage during that customer interaction, there is a strong chance a staff member is going to get involved. Ensuring staff are prepared and equipped with the information and strategies to be successful is an important ingredient in guaranteeing a good customer experience. This can’t be ignored.
That brings us to the second pillar: customer relationships. Today’s modern internet banking solution tends to provide the customer with a complete view of all their products and services with a bank. It provides the tools to initiate any action that the customer may want to take, and also allows them to query any other product or service that they may require. All in all a great service, right?
The concern voiced by the bank staff member in my example above, was that these self-service tools provide excellent information across a range of services. Better in fact than the systems the bank’s own staff rely on when interacting with a customer in a branch or through a call center, and this isn’t good. Why? Because there is a great deal of additional information that a bank can and should provide to its staff that will enhance the customer relationship. Information that isn’t appropriate to include on a self-service channel such as internet banking. This information includes customer profitability, risk, up-sell suggestions, arrears information, interaction history, complaint history and marketing analysis, among others.
So the question that we as bankers should be asking ourselves is not are we investing enough in new mobile channels, but is this investment balanced against our investment in face-to-face channels? I believe, that it will be those banks who invest wisely in both forms of channel that will ultimately provide the most effective interaction between their customers, and therefore create the best customer experience.
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October 24th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels: I have been travelling recently, conducting a serie… http://t.co/TbP32K6O
October 24th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels: I have been travelling recently, conducting a serie… http://t.co/uMV1ir28
October 24th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels: I have been travelling recently, conducting a serie… http://t.co/qZi8S4dl
October 24th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional #banking channels http://t.co/JXsQ5ukv #tenfs
October 24th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional #banking channels http://t.co/JXsQ5ukv #tenfs
October 24th, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels http://t.co/xrI55iXZ Very insightful
October 24th, 2011 at 11:01 pm
#Innovation on customer managmnt RT @Hyken Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels http://t.co/5QstIQoN Very insightful
October 25th, 2011 at 7:16 am
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels http://t.co/2JsvxqSC
October 25th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels http://t.co/NkSmFm4a
October 25th, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channes – Capitalize on Change http://t.co/lbAmskQL
October 25th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Mobile vs traditional banking channels | http://t.co/4HBXkGqL #cxo #cem
October 25th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels – http://t.co/62hfFRnC
October 25th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
How do mobile channels affect your bank's #CEM? Dean Young compares mobile to traditional in this blog post: http://t.co/CQx34pxw #FSI
October 25th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
How do mobile channels affect your bank's #CEM? Dean Young compares mobile to traditional in this blog post: http://t.co/CQx34pxw #FSI
October 26th, 2011 at 5:33 am
How do mobile channels affect your bank's #CEM? Dean Young compares mobile to traditional in this blog post: http://t.co/CQx34pxw #FSI
October 26th, 2011 at 5:33 am
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels – http://t.co/62hfFRnC
October 26th, 2011 at 6:18 am
Customer management: Mobile vs traditional banking channels http://t.co/NkSmFm4a
October 27th, 2011 at 12:11 am
How do mobile channels affect your bank's #CEM? Dean Young compares mobile to traditional in this blog post: http://t.co/CQx34pxw #FSI
October 27th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
How do you manage your #bank customers? #Online or #Mobile? http://t.co/HX1j7tnl
October 28th, 2011 at 8:48 pm
How do mobile channels affect your bank's #CEM? Dean Young compares mobile to traditional in this blog post: http://t.co/CQx34pxw #FSI
October 29th, 2011 at 5:05 am
Interesting @adobefinsvcs: How do mobile channels affect your bank's #CEM? Dean Young compares mobile to traditional http://t.co/Gfyxr3yI
November 16th, 2011 at 10:25 pm
@sungardfs greater transparency & sharing info w/ Customers may also help Customer Mgmt, w/ huge cost reduction http://t.co/wngIE6q2