Kristin Moyer » Customer

Social Networking for Insurance Depends on a More Concrete Commitment to Achieve Business Value

Kristin Moyer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:08:02 +0000

Steve Leigh from the insurance team here – I wanted to let everyone know that I along with two colleagues here at Gartner (Juergen Weiss and Stephen Forte), will be talking about social networking for insurance in our upcoming teleconference on November 6th. It seems to me that there remain considerable questions about what social networking is, whether you can build a sound business case and the best strategies for creating a social network. Insurers have not been able to successfully derive significant value from externally hosted social networks like Facebook and Linkedin other than to minimally participate in the conversation. To really leverage social networking for employees, agents and customers, it is likely that they will need to invest in dedicated solutions which will help them to monitor usage, control content, and generate reports.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, as well as invite you to the upcoming event.

From Orlando to Cannes: Banking in Video and Audio

Kristin Moyer — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:10:04 +0000

From Peter Redshaw. I’m just back from the hugely successful Gartner Symposium in Orlando, USA, so now I have only the one week to help make final preparations for its sister event in Cannes, France! Orlando provided lots of evidence that confidence in the IT industry is starting to grow again and the banking and investment services team there was delighted that we got such a fantastic turnout for the banking workshops at the industries’ “Super Sunday” event.

If you are already booked for Cannes, then I wish you safe travels and look forward to seeing you there — if not, it’s an open event and not invitation only – see here to book your place. In the meantime, why not have a quick look at the very concise podcast and videocast we have prepared for Financial Services.

The podcast looks at the wider FS agenda for the week at Cannes while the videocast focuses on the “Six Killers” presentation that will kick off the FS sessions on Monday morning. You can find them here:

Podcast

Videocast

There are presentations, forums, workshops, analyst-user roundtables and networking events throughout the week. Some of these are “by registration only” sessions, so it is worth having a look at the event website and using the Agenda Builder to add these sessions to your calendar, and where necessary register your attendance. A quick summary is:

1. Six Things That Could Kill Your Financial Services Firm in 24 Months

09:30-10:30, Monday, 02 November 2009 (Location: Palais des Festivals – Ambassadeurs 2)

2. Financial Services Workshop: ‘Cost Optimization Best Practices’ and ‘Banking on Recovery’

11:00-13:30, Monday, 02 November 2009 (Location: Palais des Festivals – Ambassadeurs 1)

3. Gartner Analyst/User Roundtable: BPO for Banking/Investment Services

15:45-16:45, Monday, 02 November 2009 Speaker: Peter Redshaw

4. Gartner Analyst/User Roundtable: Collaborating With Regulators in the ‘New’ Financial Services Industry

17:00-18:00, Monday, 02 November 2009 Speaker: Alistair Newton

5. Workshop: How Will You Survive the Six Killers of the Retail Banking Sector?

08:00-09:30, Tuesday, 03 November 2009 Speakers: Alistair Newton and Peter Redshaw

6. Gartner Analyst/User Roundtable: Offshoring for Banking/Investment Services

15:45-16:45, Tuesday, 03 November 2009 Speaker: Peter Redshaw

7. Gartner Analyst/User Roundtable: Development of End-Customer-Oriented IT in Financial Services

14:30-15:30, Tuesday, 03 November 2009 Speaker: Alistair Newton

8. Executive Roundtable: The Future of European Insurance

14:30-15:30, Wednesday, 04 November 2009 Speaker: Juergen Weiss

9. Gartner Analyst/User Roundtable: To Cloud or Not to Cloud — How Applicable is Cloud Computing and SaaS for the Insurance Industry?

16:00-17:00, Wednesday, 04 November 2009 Speaker: Juergen Weiss

10. Gartner Analyst/User Roundtable: Pan-European Insurance Platforms – Dream or Reality?

09:45-10:45, Thursday, 05 November 2009 Speaker: Juergen Weiss

11. Insurance Networking Lunch (please note that this lunch requires pre-registration and is limited to 80 attendees)

13:15-14:30, Tuesday, 03 November 2009 Speaker: Juergen Weiss

Magic Quadrant for North American Mobile Retail Banking

Kristin Moyer — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:04:53 +0000

As more consumers buy mobile devices, and more banks offer consumers mobile alerts and services, banks must decide how they will support their road maps for mobile retail banking services. Stessa Cohen just published a Magic Quadrant on this – take a look (client access required): Magic Quadrant for North American Mobile Retail Banking.

The current mobile retail banking hype in North America requires banks to understand and support not only the current customer demand for alert services, but also the evolution of these services into an anytime/any mobile device point of access to financial information and transactional services. This is a simple point, but one often forgotten by North American banks. Banks that deploy mobile retail banking simply because other banks have done so run the risk of achieving poor return on investment (ROI) and creating dissatisfied customers and mobile retail banking channel silos. As more banks support alert-based services, and the mobile device becomes “just another customer touchpoint,” a bank’s lack of a strategic approach to mobile retail banking will seriously damage its competitiveness in the long term.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Kristin Moyer — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:10:17 +0000

Bank bashing continues. UK consumer group Which? has launched a campaign dubbed “Britain Needs Better Banks.” Which? says that three quarters of consumers they have surveyed think banks aren’t genuinely sorry for causing the financial crisis. Which? is inviting consumers to vote for theme songs for this campaign such as “Gold Digger,” “Take the Money and Run” and “I Hate You So Much Right Now.”

To date, banks have done little to address a lack of customer trust, yet low customer trust matters and should be a big concern for banks. What’s the next step?

In “Financial Crisis Marks the Start of New Customer Conversations,” we discussed that banks must act immediately and use every communication medium to acknowledge customers’ concerns and to deliver the message that the bank is committed to their financial stability and security. At a minimum, banks should:

Commit to desirable behavior – Commit to desirable behavior, such as increased transparency with customers.
Communicate more, not less – It may be difficult to communicate with customers that are angry or distrustful, but a lack of communication will breed more distrust and dissatisfaction. Banks should:
- Provide personalized information and communication for individual lending customers and answers to questions such as: “I’m worried about losing my job or my house. What should I do?”
- Solicit customer feedback and act on it
- Make it easy for customers to complain
- Reach out to every customer (not just the “good ones”) to tell them that you value their business and trust, and to understand if they have any concerns.

Banks should use multiple mediums to communicate: social networking technologies (blogs, microblogs, FSNs and others), Web sites, telephone, e-mail and others. Banks should leverage customer preferences for individual communications, which would be best accomplished through a centralized customer preference profile (see “Hype Cycle for Banking and Investment Services Customer Technologies, 2009”).

“My Lender”

Kristin Moyer — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:04:18 +0000

We’ve had some client interactions with C-level banking executives and others lately that have shown that many banks are so focused on operations and products that they do not understand who their customers are or what their customers really want. While many other industries have become more buyer-centric (for example, travel, e-commerce), banking has not.

Why not leverage customers as co-creators of innovation? A concept that I’ll call “My Lender” is a way to engage customers as co-creators of innovation. “My Lender” would enable customers and employees to provide input into what an “ideal” lender would be. What would their ideal lender look like, act like? What is an ideal customer experience? What would a bank need to do to get customers to hold more products with one bank?

For the “My Lender” factory to be of value, banks would first need to conduct primary research (including surveys, focus groups) with customers to identify key attributes valued by customers. Lenders can then use social media applications, collaboration tools or potentially idea management tools to facilitate generating, capturing, discussing and developing, organizing, evaluating and prioritizing valuable insight or alternative thinking that would otherwise not have emerged and/or may be lost through normal processes.

OFFICIAL projections on H1N1 for the US

Kristin Moyer — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:16:31 +0000

Rick DeLotto here… I was surprised this morning to find how few knew about the August 7, 2009, “REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT ON U.S. PREPARATIONS FOR 2009-H1N1 INFLUENZA” by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. EVERYONE with responsilbity for business continuity should download and take a look at it.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/PCAST_H1N1_Report.pdf

Let me quote an important part:

“While the precise impact of the fall resurgence of 2009-H1N1 influenza is impossible to predict, a plausible scenario is that the epidemic could:

produce infection of 30–50% of the U.S. population this fall and winter, with symptoms in approximately 20–40% of the population (60–120 million people), more than half of whom would seek medical attention.
lead to as many as 1.8 million U.S. hospital admissions during the epidemic, with up to 300,000 patients requiring care in intensive care units (ICUs). Importantly, these very ill patients could occupy 50–100 percent of all ICU beds in affected regions of the country at the peak of the epidemic and could place enormous stress on ICU units, which normally operate close to capacity.
cause between 30,000 and 90,000 deaths in the United States, concentrated among children and young adults. In contrast, the 30,000–40,000 annual deaths typically associated with seasonal flu in the United States occur mainly among people over 65. As a result, 2009-H1N1 would lead to many more years of life lost.
pose especially high risks for individuals with certain pre-existing conditions, including pregnant women and patients with neurological disorders or respiratory impairment, diabetes, or severe obesity and possibly for certain populations, such as Native Americans.

There is an important issue with respect to timing:

The fall resurgence may well occur as early as September, with the beginning of the school term, and the peak infection may occur in mid-October.
But significant availability of the 2009-H1N1 vaccine is currently projected to begin only in mid-October, with several additional weeks required until vaccinated individuals develop protective immunity.”

Pandemic planning is not a “print, distribute and forget” event– make sure your precautions are up to date, and constantly monitor your local health situation. What did you test today?

What’s Your Next Bold Move?

Kristin Moyer — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:02:51 +0000

Stessa Cohen and Rick De Lotto here. Forgive the allusion to Ani Difranco, but when If more than half of your customer base doesn’t trust you, make a bold move to gain confidence. Some recent figures from Ramussen Reports paint a bleak, and rapidly deteriorating, state of trust for banking in the US.

Back in October and February we pointed out that the economic crisis was an opportunity for banks to deliver honest, clear, transparent communication to their customers (and others) at all touchpoints, from Twitter to telephone banking.
We followed this up with a note advising our clients how to do this in a way that would engender confidence that both they (customers) and you (the bank) would weather the crisis. Not in a rosy-colored glasses, kumbaya way, but with information, tools, and transparency.
Consumer satisfaction with banks continued to decline, falling 4 percent to an February, 2009, ACSI score of 75 out of 100

Now with regular press full of near-daily news stories about rising salaries and bonuses in the financial services industry, consumer confidence is in even steeper decline. A just-published survey by Ramussen Reports indicates that 51% of Americans lack confidence in the stability of the banking system down from 46% in April and headed back towards the 57% reached in February. Opinions may vary for any single bank, but It’s time now for serious communication for consumers who are seriously lacking in systemic confidence. Is it a bold move? Not any more. Candor now might save long lines later.

Using Customer Segmentation as the Starting Point

Kristin Moyer — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:49:59 +0000

All too often, banks make products that are focused on a blanket of perceived customer needs. We have talked about the importance of segmentation in many different topic areas over the past couple of years, a few examples being:

A product announcement last week related to customer segmentation caught my eye. PNC announced Virtual Wallet Student. The offering includes:

Savings account
Calendar
Online bill pay
Money bar
Wish list
Savings engine
Etc.

It also sends a text message or e-mail to students and parents if there is a risk of overdrawing or if the account goes below a pre-defined level. Parents can transfer money to the student’s account through a Send Money feature.

There may be other offerings out there that are similar to this and I’m just not aware of all of them all. But this is a product that focuses on a specific segment, and delivers a set of products and services that is attractive to this segment. My kids are many years away from college still (in fact, we’re still working on how to get dressed by ourselves without Mom and Dad’s help), but if I had a kid in college I’d probably sign up for this product even if PNC weren’t my primary bank.

My point is that customer segmentation should be a starting point with everything we do in the banking industry. What if instead of having this as our starting point…

Checking
Savings
Credit card
Mortgage
Etc.

…We had something like this as our starting point:

Recent high school graduate
College student
Recent college graduate
Newly married
New parents
Planning for retirement
Retired
Sports enthusiast
International traveler
Self-employed
New to banking (e.g., little or no credit history)
Etc.

Pay careful attention to the proposals, but hold on to your wallet.

Kristin Moyer — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:54:27 +0000

On 17 June 2009, in a report titled “A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation,” U.S. President Barack Obama called for “a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system.” (see http://www.ustreas.gov/news/index1.html). Under the proposal, the federal government will assume a new role as a systemic risk regulator, with increased authority over a wide range of institutions. This will have a major long term impact on bank technology ,especially as an enabler of regulatory reporting and enhanced managerial control.

With a few minor exceptions, it is far too early to tell what the results of these proposals will be. This is but one of a series of sweeping reforms facing a legislature already overwhelmed by economic and political circumstances, both domestic and worldwide as well as lawmakers already engaged for a hotly-contested mid-term election cycle involving the entire House of Representatives and slightly over a third of the US Senate. Media hype will be high, but actual regulations remain in the indefinite future. It deliberately takes a long, complicated process for an idea to eventually become an actual regulation: these proposals might stall, only to reappear as Executive Orders if banks, long deemed part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, are deemed to be in peril.

Whatever the outcome, banks should expect to face increased demands from their stakeholders for better visibility and accountability. Some long-lead technology-related time items should be started now, as they will be useful even if the need for new regulations diminishes.

Evaluate technology solutions that add speed, transparency, improved analytics and reporting, and worldwide compatibility to risk management and compliance efforts, such as enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platforms, spreadsheet controls, continuous controls monitoring (CCM), incident management, and policy training and certification. Demand for this is not going to go away, as it comes in equal part from investors, partners and governments.
Lower your level of trust: review your partner ecosystem – and map the linkages and potential impacts of technological and partner failure. Explicitly risk rate each link or critical dependency, and set up a periodic framework for reassessment.
If you do not have public-policy monitoring capabilities add them now. If you do, expand them: expect other governments to come up with similar proposals requiring tracking. Volunteer your enterprise’s skilled staff as expert witnesses, media commentator and information sources. Participate fully in the commentary process.

We are tracking the technology impacts of the proposals as they develop– keep an eye on the blog for details.

I’m Not Banking on Random Acts of Kindness

Kristin Moyer — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:01:05 +0000

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!