Beware of Customer Expectations

Today morning, as part of my job, I visited the technology office of a bank in my work city. This visit reminded me of my relationship with them over 7 years back. Then I was a software project manager in my previous company. As a typical software professional from India, I was required to travel to different geography based on the location of my client.

During this period I was posted to a branch in southern most part of Mumbai. There was only one ATM nearby. This belonged to the bank I had visited in the morning. I called up the call center and expressed my interest in opening a savings account with the bank. The call center agent took down my contact details and stated that a representative from the bank will be contacting me before the end of the day.

True to her work, I got a call from the bank representative in the noon and he landed up at my office around late in the afternoon. I handed over my identification papers and the initial cheque to open the account. When it came to filling up the customer acquisition form, the representative just asked me to sign the form and mentioned that he will fill it from the information available in the identification papers. I was impressed.

He mentioned that the welcome kit will be delivered within 7 working days. Again, true to his word, on day 4 I received my welcome kit containing my cheque book as well as the ATM card. Again, I was impressed.

I had a lovely relationship with the bank while it lasted. I still do not know which branch owned my account. All requests were handled over the phone. Again, I was very impressed. I recommended this bank to everyone I knew.

Then, I was drafted to an onsite project. This meant I was not transacting anymore. But I did maintain my minimum balance as required. After sometime, the bank deactivated my account. I called them and requested that they re-activate my account. They asked me to come to their branch and apply for reactivation of my account. I explained that I was on an onsite project and cannot visit the branch. The agent was cold in her response that I have to come to the branch and they cannot help me otherwise. After a few such followups, I was frustrated and stated that I would like to terminate my relationship. The response I got "for that also you have to visit the branch".

After a couple of months, the bank started deducting a "inactive charge" from my account every month. This led to my balance falling below the required minium. This led to the bank making additional deduction as "non maintenance of minimum balance". In the next 6 months, my entire balance was wiped off.

It was real sad that the bank started at such a high note on customer service and satisfaction. But failed in their process when it was really needed. I blame the acquisition process of the bank which set up such excellent acquisition process that I had very high recommendation of the bank. But now, I tell everyone to beware of the bank.

Data Driven Company

"We are a data driven company"

I bet you have heard the above sentences infinite number of times. The speakers often mean that they have processes instituted for decisions to be taken based on facts and hard data rather than pure intuition.

My job entails selling customer analytics solutions. Analytics is dependent on the richness of data available to be mined. The availability of data is often the toughest challenge. Since most transactions systems were designed for just easing the transactions, they only collect information necessary for completing the transactions. During the time of selecting transaction systems, analytics was nowhere in sight for the evaluation criteria. So it is no surprise that data needed for analytics are not available within a company.

But what often surprises me, or let me say amuses me, is the attempt by the clients to run the "best" analytics on the available data. I was shocked to hear from one senior executive the statement "but all we have is 3 fields on customer data". This executive wanted a solution which will work on the 3 fields and not demand additional data. He claimed that his customer did not give more data.

Now why should a customer part with any more information than is needed? Let me illustrate this by my personal experience with buying automobile insurance in USA and India. India has a standard rate card. So I am not enticed nor am interested in giving any more information than is mandated for the insurance cover. Whereas, in the USA, I know that certain information, like marriage and family will help me get a lower premium. So I am happy to part with that information. I asked the same question to this execution "What has the customer to gain by giving you additional information? Why should he give you additional information?".

The company could have provided additional or special privileges to the customer based on certain information. This would have enabled them to get more information from the customer. The cost of this information could have been justified by the richer analytics that could be run on the customer data.

Just stated that we have limited data is not an excuse. It reflect poor foresight of the company. You cannot let the limited data drive your future activities. You need to enrich your data collection to meet future business needs.

Who owns the company?

Hi, I know i promised to post regularly. I know I have not done so for a loooong time. I got a new job and have been very very busy fitting in. Lets hope things settle down soon. Now back to the post.

I was in the reception area of one of the banks. This bank has a very impressive building as its head office. I was watching as a middle aged lady walked in. She was followed by two other ladies and a kid in tow. She was coaxing them to follow her.

It was at that moment that the security head happen to notice this small group. They were admiring the massive interiors .. which also boasts a 3 floor water wall along its walls (now that should give away the identity of the bank). The security asked them what they were doing. The lady replied that they were visiting the bank's branch and starting walking towards the area where the entrance to the branch was located.

Now the building has a branch outlet on the ground floor. It has an entrance from the outside. As well as an entry from the reception area. The lady obviously knew about this internal area too. She wanted to show the lovely structure to her accomplices. And she was very proudly showing it off too. Just as a housewife likes to show off a new furniture in her house.

The security head refused to allow the group to continue and asked them to leave the building and enter the branch from the external entrance. Everyone seemed a bit upset over this.

I found it very annoying that me and others who were visitors (some business and some personal) were allowed to loiter in the reception area, but an obvious customer was not allowed to do the same.

Should not the customer feel she owns the company? Will this sense of ownership not increase the loyalty of the customer? Just imagine the proud feeling the lady would have accomplished, if she could have been allowed to complete her journey and show off "her bank" to her friends. Here is one bank which lost one lovely opportunity to give the customer a chance to feel proud of "her bank". Goes back to the old adage that customer relationship is not in process but in the heart and soul of each employee.

Credit the Customer

One of the challenges when serving a large number of retail customers is communicating policy changes. And if the change involves withdrawing a convenience feature, there is all the more criticality involved. There is a good amount of chance that even if a mailer is sent to all customers, a significant percentage of customers will just ignore it.

A couple of years back, I was in discussion with a outlet manager for a telecom service provider. For some reason, the management had decided to stop accepting bill payments in cash. An insert announcing the same was put into the bills sent out in the previous month. The outlet was instructed not to accept any cash payment and accordingly on the given date the feature in the system was disabled.

The day this was implemented was a day of total chaos in the outlet. Every other customer was in queue to pay his bill by cash. On learning that this feature was withdrawn, they were very frustrated.

At this moment, the outlet manager came out with a solution. He instructed all the counter persons to swipe their own credit cards in lieu of payment of the bill. Whenever a card went over limit, he loaned his own card to the counter person. Thus, not a single customer was turned back.

The following day, he sent a person around to pay all the credit card outstanding by the cash collected the previous day. It took about 3 weeks for the scenario to stabilize and have almost all the customers pay in a non-cash mode.

But, atleast at this particular outlet, during the 3 weeks no customer had to return without payment of bill.

Vision to have a "VISION"

It is said leading a company is about being a visionary. In fact, top management are supposed to have "vision" on the future of the company. But in reality how many managers actually have vision.

When asked about his company's vision, a senior manager of an insurance company replied that he would be growing at "x" percent and will be selling "y" thousand policies. This sounds so text bookish. Is this supposed to be a vision or an exercise in mathematical extrapolation.

Five years down the line, will customer still be buying policies. Or will they be looking at solutions for risk mitigation, if not risk elimination. Why does one buy an insurance policy? To cover risk. (That was simple!)

Buying a risk cover is not the optimum solution. It is more like hedging. The optimum solution will be to eliminate the risk.

Let us take car insurance as an example. A visit to the BMW museum in Munich, Germany, will introduce one to the concept of intelligent cars. These are connected to a central system which tracks the path of every car on the road and guides it on the appropriate road. It also has a collision prevention module, which kicks in and slams the brake, if it senses the distance with another object too close. Now in this scenario, where the chances of a collision is negated, what would be my incentive to purchase a risk cover for my car?

I would rather invest in the sensor system to prevent collision. If such a system becomes mandatory in all cars, that much the better.

Now back to the insurance company. Will they still be selling insurance policies? If he does not move to providing risk aversion or risk mitigation solutions, this company will probably not be around in 5 years.

A couple of years back, I was consulting a telecom service provider on their CRM initiatives. While discussing with the COO, I was updating him on my discoveries and possible recommendations in the CRM processes at this company. When I finished, he stated that whatever I had to say was acceptable. But his concern was not that he cannot service his customer within the stated SLA. He wanted to know what should he do to be able to survive in future.

With convergence being round the corner, his concern was how should he look at the market and how should he package his products and services. How will the new technologies affect his business model?

Now that is vision. He was on the right path to establishing a vision. Yes, he did have a chart on the revenue figures and the bottom line. But when asked about vision, he admitted that he still needed to have one.

That was one person who had the vision to have a vision.