Rethinking the Customer Experience

Just got a really interesting survey from Deloitte looking at the future of financial services. The document is based upon a survey of 200 industry execs, and garners their views across a broad brush of areas.

Interestingly 89% of those surveyed believe their firm survived the crisis as expected or better than expected. I expect you can guess who’s in the 11% who thought their firm suffered badly.

Now most of them are looking at recovery and 88% are positive about the future ... I expect you can guess who’s in the 12% who aren’t.

Anyways, there are loads of question in there, but here’s a few charts that really intrigued me.

In answer to the question: what strategic objectives of your business do you think have experienced the most long-term damage from the financial crisis and economic downturn? more bankers than securities folks were worried about their ability to continue operating as they did in the past.

In fact, it amazes me that 66% of bankers and 75% of securities personnel are therefore answering this question as ‘business as usual’.

What planet are they on?

Similarly, when asked what positive opportunities have resulted from the financial crisis and economic downturn? the answer is overwhelmingly that competitors have been squeezed out of the market but, more intriguingly, Europeans are far more focused upon cost reductions than the Americans.

Now, I keep hearing that this crisis was caused by US investment banks ... so how come it’s Europe that’s cutting the costs?

And what are they going to do strategically about it?

Well, most are going to focus upon better measurement of risks.

No wonder we all hear stuff about liquidity risk and real-time risk management these days.

Finally, most of the banks agree that it is customers and their relationship with customers that has been hit hardest by this crisis.

Therefore their #1 focus is to rebuild relationships.

How will they do that?

By focusing upon improving the customer experience.

Now then, who’s doing that? What examples are out there of customer experience improvements?

Aha, I know one.

Checkout BBVA’s ATM of the Future:

BBVA's ATM of the Future from Chris Skinner on Vimeo.

Fascinating stuff.

Comments

[Brett King]

Chris,

Absolutely SPOT ON.

The overwhelming view I'm seeing from the big banks is that we survived, so therefore we must be doing something right. We know we have to change in the future, but the immediate concerns are resolved so business as usual.

This is painful to watch...

BK

[Giles Andrews]

Great news Chris! Gives disruptors like Zopa more time to pinch share.

[FredericBaud]

Imagine a giant meteorite has just fallen on planet finance. Financial T-Rexes who ruled the world for ages just take a deep breath and ponder for a minute: Should we improve our predation strategy and go eat herbivores, our youngs and other less efficient T-Rexes? Or should we go on a long and painful re-engineering of our DNA?

At the same time, nice furry mammals, the size of a mouse, go out of the ground and look at the vast landscape they could now go conquer.

Sure, give disruptors some time and something different will come out of this upheaval.

:-)

[Ian Kerr]

Hi Chris,

We found a similar sentiment echoed at this year’s European ATMs show last month where results from a delegate survey revealed that a key priority for more than a quarter of ATM industry professionals is to improve customer service.

Customer service is clearly a top priority throughout the industry and, with the ATM at the front line in banking reputation, it’s definitely important that banks don’t lose sight of how significant the ATM is to customers, despite lots of chatter about innovations in online and mobile channels.