Michael MaozAs you know, I moved homes. Not far, but to another town. I also bought a home (cheaper than renting and you get to rip things up and rebuild them), but didn’t take out my mortgage from my primary bank. I wanted to. I tried to. No one seemed to care. I found a new bank. They also didn’t seem to care once the paperwork for the loan was signed, but they had the lowest rates. When I try to reach them about anything now, I get the equivalent of, “Oh, you’re alive? Could you spell your name again?”
Both of ‘my’ banks could replace their website banner with the title: “Don’t try to find the phone number of your local branch.” We’re new in town. My daughter and I tried an experiment: she set off in the car for the local branch bank using her iPhone app as mapping, and I tried using the bank’s telephone system to reach the branch. Who would make contact first? Well, six minutes later my daughter called from the lobby of the bank, and I was still stuck speaking to a voice response unit (“SPEAK TO AGENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!” “I’m sorry, did you say “inspector grant?” “SPEAK TO AGENT” “I’m sorry, I’m having trouble understanding your response..”
The irony is that a few months back I was on a plane between NY and San Francisco, sitting aside the Chief Innovation Officer for one of the banks who is giving away all of that bonus money. She was on her way to Japan where they are doing an ultra-cool, cutting edge mobile banking pilot. This could revolutionize banking she said.
I asked: could it help me find the phone number of my branch? Could it tie the mortgage bankers to the investment advisor? Could it alert corporate that a customer has moved and initiate a campaign to ensure they stay customers? No, she said, we have separate initiatives for that. This is an innovation project.
Imagine: innovation. In Japan I’ll use my phone to scan barcodes of items and then pull up the website and do one stop shopping from my phone and it will come to my door. Maybe just what we need. But why would I do that with your bank that offers undifferentiated service versus another bank? That made her smile: “Because we all offer the same level of service.”
I just stayed quiet on that one.
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Category: CRM Customer Centric Web Innovation and Customer Experience Tags:
