What's Your Promise?

“We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.”  -Abraham Lincoln 

A brand promise is the expectation you’ve given your members and communities.  It is your legacy and your differentiator over your competitors.  It is the basis of peoples’ decisions to buy with you. 

Your brand promise should stand the test of time no matter what products you offer, what communities you serve, and the goals you have for your financial institution.  Hence it needs to be simple, yet aspirational, and most importantly, something you can deliver on no matter what.

After all, it’s not the making of the promise that is important, is the keeping of that promise. 

How do you go about coming up with the one big thing that you want to promise and can deliver on no matter what?  Here’s how:

1. Listen to the buzz.  Figure out what your members and customers really think about you.  This is NOT your perception about what people are thinking and saying about you.  We often make a big mistake in assuming more people know about our credit union or bank than actually do.  Moreover, we assume we know how they view us.  But there is no better way than to ask.  Ask your staff members, board members, current members and people in the community what they think about your financial institution.  Also do searches on sites like Yelp, Foursquare, and other social media sites to gauge the honest feedback and reviews people are posting about your credit union or bank.
2. What do you stand for?  Working together as a team to determine your short and long term goals and making sure that those goals align with the foundation of your business is key in being able to live up to your promise to customers and members.  Is it to make banking fun, easy, or efficient?  Or perhaps having the lowest fees?  Price alone is hard to stand on, and determining the "why" of your organization takes some time, but the promise you end up making should be pointing directly toward this target.
3. Do a SWOT analysis.  What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as an organization?  Having a candid discussion with your team about all of these areas will be beneficial as you enumerate and discover differentiators for your financial institution. 
4. What is your brand’s personality?  What attributes does your credit union or bank exemplify through the course of doing business with customers and members?  These attributes will help you determine the kind of promise you will make and how you will deliver on that promise over time.  “A brand personality is an expression of a brand, described and experienced as human personality traits e.g. friendly, intelligent, innovative, etc.  It is an expression of the relationship between the consumer and the brand.”  (Source: www.esomar.org).

It’s all about values.  

Core values and brand values are two ways of saying the same thing, but having these foundational values in place that guide every decision you make as an organization is very important because it gives your employees and members and the community something real to believe in other than products or services.

Some great examples of core values can be found at the following companies: Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton,Whole Foods Market, and Zappos.com.  What makes these examples great, however, aren’t the words written on those pages or in their respective break rooms.  It is the lengths to which these companies go in their everyday businesses in order to fulfill these values that makes them so special. 

Having a brand promise can seem like such a little thing when you have to worry about how your financial institution is going to keep growing in this heavily competitive and regulated industry.  But it is one of the most important things your business can do for sustainability in the future.  It comes with many benefits:

• Employee loyalty.  Enumerating the things listed above gives your employees a “why” for coming to work for your company.  When they buy into the vision and mission, they are investing themselves in you just as you have invested in them. 
• Greater brand awareness.  Having these many facets of your brand defined gives you more bandwidth to do some really special stuff with your marketing and branding efforts.  Put together a brand communication plan for both inside your financial institution and outside.  Communicating the different elements of your brand at every opportunity with employees and customers will yield greater brand awareness for everyone. 
• Knowing exactly who is best suited for your institution.  If you are always targeting different groups for different campaigns, or find yourself asking “who is our best target market,” focusing on the elements of your brand – including your brand promise – will help you determine the customers and members for whom you are able to serve perfectly. 
• Organizational alignment.  This is the “utopia” we all strive for in business; ensuring that everyone in your organization - from the tellers to the back office staff to the board members – is on the same page with the same end game in mind.  Having a well-structured brand is the foundation for alignment across your organization. 

While it is important to be focusing on the metrics that measure the growth and progress of your credit union or bank, not focusing on your brand as well can become an enormous liability on your balance sheet.  At the end of the day, what is your promise?

Amanda

Let MarketMatch help you harness the power of your brand to impact your bottom line.  Our proprietary branding process will target opportunities to obtain new customer relationships, grow existing customer relationships, and build brand awareness. Contact me for details.

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How Do You Serve Your Chicken?

There is a Chinese food restaurant in my neighborhood that is my husband’s and my “go to” place when we have a night where do don’t feel like cooking.  Out of the eight or so Chinese places that are within 10 minutes of our house, we like going to this particular one the most. 

The reason we like going there so much is because the place is clean, the people are friendly, and they are flexible with how they let you order traditional items on their menu.  For example, we love General Tso’s Chicken, but hate the heavy breading and greasy fried meat found at most places.  Here is our typical order:

General Tso’s Chicken

Unbreaded, steamed/boiled white meat

Extra broccoli

With as many times we have ordered this dish in our health-conscious way, we have probably received the finished product in that many ways as well:

• No broccoli
• Extra vegetables, but no broccoli
• Chicken was fried with breading
• Chicken was fried without breading
• Very little meat and lots of vegetables
• Big pieces of steamed chicken with the perfect amount of sauce and broccoli
• Chicken with runny sauce
• Do you see my point now?

I never know what I’m going to get when I order that particular dish, and, as long as my chicken isn’t fried, at the end of the day I don’t really care that much.  But if I decide to change, I would do so quietly.  I just wouldn’t go back again.

It's All About the Service Delivery

There IS a relation between me ordering my General Tso’s “my way” Chicken and banking with my financial institution.  What happened if I mailed a check to be deposited into my checking and it went into savings instead, thus causing an overdraft?  How many times do you think that would happen before I decided to change institutions? 

Your service delivery is everything.  And, while each person’s comfort level and anger threshold is different, you need to make sure your entire team is ready to treat every interaction and transaction like it is your last with that member.  Listen to them, make sure you do exactly what they ask for, exceed their expectations, and give them a reason to come back.  Otherwise, you may be quietly losing members or customers without them giving you a chance to find out why.

Amanda

Want to gauge the service delivery in your financial institution?  MarketMatch can help!  Our process creates and transforms the actual “voice of the customer” into clear knowledge-based strategy and ties service delivery strategy to the customer experience and brand promise.

Contact me to learn how we can help turn your challenges into opportunities with guaranteed ROI on your efforts. 

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Managing To The Customer's 1%

Lets face it.  Regardless of your great checking product or competitive rates or fancy branches, when it comes down to it, customers really want convenience and assurance.

 

The convenience is the acquisition phase. In most cases, the FI with the most branches wins market share.  But we can get into the discussion of covering the footprint vs brand awareness and differentiation in a different blog.

Today, I want to discuss retention and relationship depth … the assurance phase.

When it comes to existing customers, here’s the REAL secret …

99% of the time, your customers just want you to do your job!  Don’t screw up!

It’s what happens in the other 1% of the time that really helps you to stand out. That other 1% -- when they’ve mismanaged their budget, want to make a major purchase, are experiencing a significant life change, need guidance.

Our rally cry as bankers should be to shine during the customer’s 1%.

• Train to spot the 1%: Your staff should understand this 1% rule and know the difference between a need to simply do their jobs and a need that will change a customer’s life.
• Life Stage: To help identify many of your 1% situations, understand the events in a typical life cycle that impact someone’s finances.  Define the events, understand the customer needs, present solutions, provide front-line tools and train, train, train.
• Tell your story: Your staff impact customer’s lives every day.  Your bank or credit union has helped many customers tell their life stories.  You’ve helped them buy their first home, manage their budget so they can keep their home in times of trouble, you’ve helped to retire early or restructure finances when priorities change with the birth of a child.  You should share these stories inside and outside of your branches.

Being prepared for the customer’s 1% will help to create more loyal customers, will increase referrals, and will help deepen relationships.  Keeping their accounts accurate and not charging ridiculous fees is expected – for the day-to-day stuff, people only notice when you drop the ball.  But, being there for customers when they REALLY need you is what gets them talking and keeps them with you.

MarketMatch is a full-service marketing consulting firm, dedicated to the credit union and community banking community.  We utilize knowledge-based strategies to help you FOCUS on the efforts that will generate MOMENTUM and yield the greatest RESULTS for your bottom line.

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Lend an Ear to Complaints

As marketers, we focus on creating a positive customer/member experience, but unfortunately sometimes people still get upset over a fee, service issue, etc. And when customers/members are unhappy, they are 5-20 times more likely to share a bad experience than they are to spread good news.

And with the increasing popularity of social media, sharing a negative experience is easier than ever.

Take this customer for example…

A Philadelphia Bank of America customer was upset over a series of charges. The customer lived across from the BoA branch and hung a larger banner on his building reading, “I Hate Bank of America.” His story caught the attention of local newspapers and also the local NBC station. After 7 months of having the banners displayed, the disgruntled customer took it to the Internet. He started a blog and myspace page strictly dedicated to “how much he hates Bank of America.” It has been almost 2 years since the inquiry and he is STILL posting blogs and encouraging other customers share their negative experiences.

So what can we learn from this…

Simply not responding to a complaint can generate significant negative word of mouth. Having a process in place that allows customers/members an opportunity to voice their comments and that ensures all comments receive a response will means higher satisfaction levels and less backlash. It’s all about listening to what people have to say and fostering two-way dialogue for solving problems, answering questions, recognizing suggestions and thanking compliments.

Do you have a process in place for reviewing and responding to customer/member comments in a timely manner? Clearly, your front line staff should feel empowered to fix any issues that might arise, but you can also utilize a blog or facebook page open to comments, devote a section of your website to allow customers/members to submit comments, or create a satisfaction survey.

And when you receive a comment, do something about it... listening is important, but action makes the difference!

Best,

Jamie

Branding ... It's Not What You Say, But What You Do.

If you don't think that you can afford to rebrand your institution in this economy, think again.

It’s all in the definition.  Yes, your brand is tied (in part) to your name, logo and visual appearance.  But it is defined by the customer experience.

To rebrand your institution properly, you need to focus less on the creative department and more on strategy and day-to-day interactions.

Check out this great article published on customerthink.com.  

Where are you in the continuum of: do-nothing; basic Customer Loyalty programs; CRM (customer relationship management) and CEM (Customer Experience Management)?

As financial institutions, we know more about our customer’s activities than most any industry – yet we are one of the most commoditized.  We help our customers manage their money – yet we tend to take the emotion and empathy out of our messages. 

This is why branding is my passion!  It’s about people … it’s about turning “potential-customers” into “customers” and converting “customers” into “evangelists!”

When there is little tangible difference between “Bank A” and “Credit Union B,” can you afford NOT to rebrand in this economy? 

Take care,

Eric