Stessa Cohen here, writing the Banking & Investment Services blog for today.
Over the weekend, at soccer practice, at the grocery store, at the coffee shop, I heard (okay, eavesdropped on) a lot conversations about last weeks financial news. Since I live in a tight-knit community in Philadelphia, I knew many of the folks — teachers, stay-at-home parents, writers, programmers, carpenters all worried about whether their retirement savings and other bank accounts are going down the tubes, whether they should be storing their savings under their mattresses instead of at the bank. Regular, ordinary bank customers.
As a Banking analyst, I see these conversations as opportunities for banks. To open up and talk directly, less formally but with information, not fluff about the financial crisis. There are some reasons why I think it’s important.
First, this crisis and the financial services restructuring in the industry is confirming for many people the reasons why banks are not to be trusted. Folks who remember the Great Depression or grew up with parents who did, or younger people who don’t trust any legacy institution. That pretty much includes everyone, huh?
Second, other finance-related communities and social networks like Mint, Wesabe, zecco and blogs like The Simple Dollar and others are talking and sharing information, accurate and otherwise.
Third, people are noticing that banks aren’t talking. The Chicago Sun-Times took banks to task for not making it easier for customers to figure out if their banks are safe.
“The big sign on your neighborhood bank might tell the time and temperature. But it won’t tell you how your bank is weathering the credit crisis.” “It’s up to consumers to hunt for that information. The industry and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the collector of bank financial reports, don’t make the hunt easy.”
One of the most important aspects of the current credit/financial services crisis is going to be customer management. How do you tell your customers what is going on?
- Don’t sugar coat the situation. People are getting the idea that situation is pretty bad. You don’t have to reveal everything but loosen the tie.
- Explain what is happening at your institution and how it will affect what customers care about most: their money and their futures.
- If you can’t explain it in easy-to-understand language, point to others who can.
- Make it easy for your customers to find out what you have to say and what is happening at their bank. Don’t wait for your customers to come to you – go out there and tell them on: Twitter, your blog, Facebook, Youtube MySpace, or even Flickr. Whatever. Wherever.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Rick DeLotto // Sep 23, 2008 at 4:27 pm
and here I thought MY mom was a soccer fan… I wonder if she was just collecting gossip?
I came to Gartner out of competitive intelligence, and am always delighted to see an intel technique at work. What Stessa has shown here is first-class HUMINT—human intelligence.—gathered in the open, analyses and assessed for impact.
Is YOUR bank doing this? Do YOU know how scared your customers are? Do you know what they are saying about you in the neighborhood? Why isn’t your staff “collecting the buzz” at coffee shops, local events and supermarket lines and passing it up the chain for analysis? Don’t ever doubt that enough of the truth can be known with sufficient clarity early enough to make a difference.
2 Stessa Cohen // Sep 23, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Do banks realize the buzz is at the coffee shop and online? Are bankers listening to the Twitter buzz, mommy bloggers, about the financial crisis? Not just what bankers are saying to each other.
3 Snowball Rolling Down a Hill // Oct 20, 2008 at 1:43 pm
[...] Few banks are engaging their customers. Last week, 0% of the top 10 global banks were using their Websites to engage customers. Here’s what the top 20 global banks are saying about the market crisis this week: [...]
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