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Egyii
Singapore
www.egyii.com 
An Egyii White PaperImproving the Customer Experience in Banking
By James Irvine, Director 
 
 
Introduction
Financial institutions are at acrossroad. There is a financialcrisis and it is the customer who is suffering, causing abreak of loyalty and trust andtherefore a loss of business.
How to address this?
Financial institutions cancontinue to focus on re-engineering products, systemsand policies, or they can turntheir focus towards thecustomer and customer experience.
What is “customer experience?”
According to Peter Merholz,“Customer experience refersto the totality of experience acustomer has with a business,across all channels andtouchpoints”.All interactions with thecustomer should culminate ina positive customer experience if customers goaway feeling that their personal needs were met andthey were treated properly.On top of that, "Loyalty andtrust," says Jessica Debor in her article ‘CRM Gets Serious’ in
CRM Magazine
, "is now drivenprimarily by a company'sinteraction with its customersand how well it delivers on their wants and needs."This white paper will focus on theinteraction that the customer haswith the customer-facing staff theydeal with.How do customers feel when theyleave the bank after dealing with amember of staff? By delivering theright experience, financial institutionshave the opportunity to win back their customers’ trust, loyalty andbusiness.
The Challenge Financial institutionsFace
David Amano, Senior Partner atDachis Corp, reports walking by aBank of America branch in the USAand instead of seeing a bank full ofATMs and promotional materials, helooked through the window at whathe calls an ‘oasis’. Right at the frontof the branch was a lounge with aflat screen TV, designer lighting,leather chairs and gourmet coffee.
The Problem
This is all nice on the surface, buthere’s the problem. Financialinstitutions are creating “pleasantenvironments” in physical space andthrough technology solutions (suchas CRM systems). But will this cut thecake?Do all these “positive” feelingsremain once the banker startspersonally interacting with thecustomer? Or do these feelings
 
 
dissipate immediately whenthe banker doesn’t interactthe way the customer wantsto be interacted with?
What do Customers ReallyWant?
On a personal experiencelevel, what do customers wantfrom their banker?
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They want patience. Theydon’t want to get thefeeling that they are beingrushed so that their banker can move on to another customer.
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They want to feel special,like a five-star hotel guest.They don’t want to feelthat they are being givenexactly the same speechand responses as everyother customer.
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They want to feel takencare of. They don’t wantto feel that their banker has his mind on his salestargets or anywhere elseother than on them andtheir individual situation.
It’s all very well to claim that acustomer trusts his/her banker if he is honest, open andreliable. But this is not enough.If the customer does not get apositive feeling during andafter a meeting with her banker, then everything else will beovershadowed.It is the customer’s experience of thebanker that is the critical decisionfactor.
The Opportunity
However, this is where the greatestopportunity lies for financialinstitutions to differentiatethemselves.Banking doesn’t have to be acommodity business. While it’srelatively straightforward to copyanother bank’s products, systems,environment and policies, everyinteraction with a customer isunique.But financial institutions have eventried to commoditize this aspect oftheir business by instituting step-by-step processes for conducting acustomer meeting, and byimplementing rules and policies for ensuring that their customer-facingpeople are honest and open.While these initiatives help to supportthe customer interaction, the secretof differentiation lies in the banker’sability to flexibly manage the minute-by-minute experience the customer is getting with him. When the banker is right there, in the customer’s worldwith her, acknowledging andresponding directly to what thecustomer is thinking and feeling inthe moment – then the customer experience takes on a new meaning
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