Kristin Moyer

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Kristin R. Moyer
Research Director
11 years at Gartner
18 years IT industry

Kristin Moyer is a research director in Industry Advisory Services/Banking and Investment Services. She has more than 17 years of experience across the global high-technology industry in a variety of roles. Ms. Moyer's research coverage includes card… Read Full Bio

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Customers as Co-Creators of Innovation – in Banking?

by Kristin Moyer  |  September 15, 2009  |  5 Comments

Giving trust away to customers and employees can inspire trust, loyalty and innovation.   Consider several cross-industry examples of giving trust away to get it back (sources:  “HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in Life)”, Seidman, 2007; JetBlue):

  • A doughnut vendor in New York City puts a pile of coins on his counter rather than making exact change for customers and lets customers make their own change.  This enabled him to sell more doughnuts (rather than taking the time to count out change) and built trust with his customers.
  • Radiohead (a rock band) let customers decide what they wanted to pay for their 2007 album “In Rainbows” and exceeded all previous digital publishing income.
  • Google lets employees spend one day a week on projects of interest, which resulted in Gmail, Google News, Orkut (a social network) and Adsense.
  • JetBlue has recently offered a new pricing model to customers through its All-You-Can-Jet Pass.  For $599, a customer can fly anywhere in the JetBlue network as often as they want for one month (Sep. 8th – Oct. 8th).   While the financial impact of this offering cannot yet be measured at the time of this writing, this pricing model puts control in the customer’s hands.  The anticipated benefit for JetBlue is improved revenue and customer retention.

These examples are industries that all have very different business models and pricing structures than banks.  The question becomes: can banks possibly give trust away to get it back?  Yes, but not by putting a change bucket on top of the counter.  Here are a few ideas:

  • Let customers build their own products (within pre-defined limits set by the bank)
  • Let customers negotiate pricing (while ensuring the pricing still meets risk and profitability requirements)
  • Let customers rate products (see here)
  • Let customers tell you what their ideal bank looks like (more on this tomorrow).

5 Comments »

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5 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Customers as Co-Creators of Innovation - in Banking? | Money Blog : 10 Dollars : Money Articles.   September 15, 2009 at 9:50 pm

    [...] More here: Customers as Co-Creators of Innovation – in Banking? [...]

  • 2 Phillip Fayers   September 16, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    Google let their engineers spend one day per week (not year) on their own projects, that’s why its called 20% time.

  • 3 Kristin Moyer   September 16, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    Yes, thanks much Phillip – typo. Will revise.

  • 4 “My Lender”   September 16, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    [...] ← Customers as Co-Creators of Innovation – in Banking? [...]

  • 5 Silona   September 16, 2009 at 9:17 pm

    I am putting together a low budget marketing survey for a potential large dollar funder for the exact topic right now!

    He wants a new bank – I have to prove to him what that design should look like.

    I am based in Austin Texas but will be in DC Sept 24- Oct 1 and Bay Area Oct 1-9 if you would like to meet in person.