David Furlonger and Alistair Newton here – today we came across a new customer service offering that caught our attention and caused us to consider why it is always non-financial service providers that are leaders in customer service. Mark Hoplamazian, CEO of Hyatt Hotels, has just announced a change to the hotel chain’s Gold Passport loyalty program: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/hotelcheckin/post/2009/05/67145891/1
It seems to us that banks could take a leaf out of Hyatt’s play book and adopt something similar in these hard economic times. What if you log on to your online banking site to pay your utility bill, and before the payment instruction is processed the bank sends you a message indicating that they have paid this bill on your behalf? Can you also imagine the client reaction if this “random act of kindness” was done in a branch setting? Now that would be customer relationship management!
Interestingly, we are starting to see the first signs of banks adopting such approaches. Recently AKBANK in Turkey, started surprising holders of their Wings branded credit card, by picking up the tab for a random selection of customers using their Wings card to pay the bill at some of Istanbul’s most upmarket restaurants. This link to the Turkish banking market is not necessarily surprising to us based on the case study work we did earlier in the year: Case Study: Turkish Bank TEB Builds a Culture to Promote Innovation.
I vote for banks to start with property taxes, mine is due this month!
3 responses so far ↓
1 Trip Allen // Jun 19, 2009 at 4:59 am
Gents
There are a lot of comparisons around the simplicity of customer experience in the hotel industry and the overly complex attempts at customer experience in the banking industry.
Banks just don’t get it.
I believe that banks are so focused on their overly complicated business- the numbers, the products, Etc that THEY FORGET ABOUT THE CUSTOMER. And the problem is, even during the economic downturn, they continue to ignore the customer (at least in this part of the world- Asia).
Whereas, hospitality is ALL ABOUT THE CUSTOMER and the experience. That is why it works.
I would take a wild guess that customer experience is probably the most sought out inquiry or request fro advise from for the Gartner banking team- and technology is not always the solution.
At Egyii, based in Singapore, we focus on client relationships in banking. If you are interested, you can read more about client relationships and customer expereince. Purely our opinion.
Regards
Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore
2 Trip Allen // Jun 19, 2009 at 5:09 am
If interested (as I forgot to include it above):
http://www.egyii.com/blog/category/marketing/customer-experience-marketing/
Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore
3 Trip Allen // Jul 10, 2009 at 3:31 am
Gents
Thanks for the insightful briefing today. It was a pleasure finally meeting you.
Cheers
Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore
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