Opportunities Lost

It may be old school, but it’s true … David Ogilvy said that, "Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising." 

What kind of service are customers and prospects receiving from your frontline staff?

Several times a year, we get the opportunity to conduct a secret shop analysis for clients. This is where we walk into the branches of our clients and their key competition and shop for checking accounts.

It never ceases to amaze me about the opportunities that many banks and credit unions are loosing at the point of sale.

The bottom line is that, unless you take specific steps to correct it, it is basic human instinct to take the easiest road. When a customer asks for information on a checking account, that’s exactly what most employees provide. We usually find one of the following responses:

Bad: The employee will hand-off the checking brochure with no explanation or effort.

Better: The employee will use the brochure as a crutch and literally read each and every checking option (in some cases even a second-chance option).

Best: The employee will ask questions to determine the best checking option, recommend a product based on the conversation and explain why that product is best using real benefits and, in the best cases, real-world personal examples (“I love our mobile banking, it’s so easy to use and you can deposit checks by just taking a picture with your smartphone.”)

If you want to move your team from Bad to Best follow these steps:

Teach: Your team wants to be helpful to the customer. Let your team know that simply giving the customer exactly what they are asking for is not helping them. Train that we must first understand their needs before we provide recommendations.

Tools: Most new accounts folks we talk to rely on crutches, even though they know the products. It’s human nature. Don’t fight it – give them useful crutches. Instead of talking to brochures, we provide our clients with tools that walk staff through the qualifying questions we want asked.

Personal Experience: Stress the importance of benefits over features. Rates are not benefits! Free is not a benefit! Saving money is a benefit … easy to use is a benefit … saving time is a benefit. If your team can speak from personal experience to these benefits it’s even better. Do all your employees use YOUR products?

Close: Providing information is one thing, but we need to ask for the close. Handing off your business card is not a close! 1) Ask to open the account today. 2) If the customer cannot, ask to get the process started for them, then make an appointment for them to come back. 3) Ask for the customer’s phone number so that you can follow-up (keep control of the situation – if you rely on the customer to call back, they won’t). 4) Provide your business card and tell the customer what days/hours you are usually at the office.

These tips sound basic, but after hundreds of shops from all over the country, I can assure you that very few banks or credit unions are following them. This process will differentiate you and help to drive account opening and cross sells at the branch level.

For more on lessons learned from our shop experiences, click here.

Take care,

Eric

Shop Around...

It’s the holiday season and everyone has shopping on the mind. But what about shopping your competition - have you shopped them lately?

Touching base with your immediate competition on their advertising, products, access, and customer service is something your financial institution should consistently be doing in order to ensure you are maintaining your competitive advantage.

It may be time to take a look at the competition and see how you stack up in the following areas:

• Advertising: What products/messages are your competition promoting and how does your financial institution stack up?
• Products: Do gaps exist in your competitions’ product lines or within product features?
• Access: What are the features of their websites and is the website interactive and resourceful? Also, what other technologies can customers/members use to interact with the bank/credit union or access their accounts?
• Customer Service: Communicate with your competition in a variety of ways (email, phone, in person, etc.) to see how they stack up. Are there ways that they excel or fall behind?

Competitive research equips you with the information that you’ll need to uncover where your financial institution excels and may lags behind. Once complete, you will better be able to identify your strengths, correct any weaknesses, and capitalize on opportunities!

Happy shopping!

Jamie

The Wave of Indifference

It seems that every company wants to focus their marketing message on providing, "outstanding service."

Yet most places we go, we're met with a tidal wave of indifference.

Seriously, it's when you're helped by someone with a personality that the service really stands out. That's a bit sad.

Shop

Take a day and shop your competitive branches. Trust me, it'll be eye opening. Besides, the weather is beautiful this time of year and it'll give you a reason to get out of your office.

Simply ask the first employee you see about checking accounts and see how they handle it. Do they ask you leading questions that will help them make a recommendation:

• Where do you bank now?
• What do you like about your account?
• Why do you want to change?
• What kind of balances do you carry?
• Etc, etc, etc

Or do they simply hand you a brochure and say, "If you have any questions come back and see us."

You'll quickly find out which banks or credit unions will be climbing the market share ladder and which will be sucked under the wave of indifference.

Training

When I speak on this topic, I love to use a Disney example and you can too.

Last summer I took our family to Disney. My 5 year old daughter wanted to see Sleeping Beauty. That's all she had talked about for months and we finally were there. We drove for two days to get there in a van who's A/C broke as soon as we hit the Florida border. We were at the park on the hottest day on Disney record ... 115 degrees - no exaggeration. We paid a king's ransom for the privilege of baking in the "Happiest (frickin') place on earth." By lunch, my 7 year old son was actually crying, "Don't make me go back out to Disney." But we hadn't seen Sleeping Beauty yet. When it was her scheduled time, we waited in line for about an hour and a half and finally came the moment of truth...

Now, imagine if Disney staffed their parks with the same employees that ride the wave of indifference. And how upset my daughter would have been and how I might have actually strangled someone.

The reality is that Sleeping Beauty and all of the other princesses, in heavy gowns and full make-up during the hottest day of the year, where exceptional! They all were on stage and they all brought their "A" game. It made the entire experience worth while and the rest of day quickly became MUCH better - especially when it cooled down.

The point? All of your employees are on stage. And there is no way of telling what trials our customers had to face to get to our branch on a given day. We need to jump off the wave of indifference and drown our customers in positive feelings. Smiles, sincerity, and an honest attempt to help. It's really not that hard, but it's also few and far between.

Do you want to differentiate your bank or CU? Spend less time worrying about checking rewards and focus on the faces and voices that customers deal with everyday.

Happy Friday,

Eric

Is it Spring Yet??

Greetings...

By the calendar, it is March and spring should be right around the corner. However, if you ask those on the east coast (the recipients of 8-12 inches of snow yesterday) they would swear it is mid-winter! Baseball is beginning and the temperatures just are not cooperating!

The point? Ahh, yes. The point is that "shifts" are happening everywhere. Shifts in the weather, shifts in the competition, and shifts in the economy. Some are slow to occur, some are swift and breathtaking, others occur and we only realize it after the fact! We need to have our customer contact points ready to act and react to the shifts and secure confidence from our customers!

Last week, we conducted 7 focus groups and 26 competitive shops for a client. The one word to describe the banking situation. WOW....and not in a good way! 50% of the 26 competitors did not even respond to our phone request for information, another 20% simply referred us to their website. I thought the in person shops would be better....not the case. In 70% of the shops, we were simply handed a brochure with no questions other than "what type of account are you interested in", 90% of the checking account discussions started and ended with Free checking!

With spring around the corner (hopefully) and the economy struggling, customers needing help, and money in motion everywhere...I think it is time for a Spring Inspection! Take a day and:

• visit ALL of your branches
• call your call center
• scour your website
• review all materials that are mailed from the institution

Do each of these with your "customer eyes" on...does your call center convey competence? Is your website truly easy to navigate, are your branches user friendly and promoting confidence in the bank/cu?

I think you may be surprised what you find! However, if YOU find it...and correct it...then it won't impact the customer negatively. Do a Spring Inspection THIS WEEK.

You will be surprised what you find...and you may also be pleasantly surprised! The key is that everyone KNOWS that they will be inspected to check on your expectations. That is an old Marty Cohen (from Cohen/Brown) saying that still resonates and has power.

Inspect...share expectations...and make sure you are ready for the current and future shifts by having your customer contact points ready to shine!

Cheers!

Bruce Clapp