As many of you may have read in my bio, I grew up in a developing country, and recently visited my family there over the holidays. While I was there, I had the opportunity to make a pretty simple transaction at a banking institution, and was so annoyed by the time I left I was determined to make my next blog entry about the customer experience.
We’ve written about the customer experience before at the Operations Council. Some of the main conclusions I’ve personally derived from our research are that:
1) Factors critical to the customer experience with a financial institution are very different than factors that drive the experience in other industries we try to model ourselves after. Banks and insurance companies are not hotels!
2) The biggest loyalty gains (as defined by a customer’s intent to continue to do business with, give more business to, and recommend an institution) come from truly understanding customer expectations and meeting those expectations, rather than arbitrarily crafting a strategy to create “customer delight”.
3) The customer experience is about much more than customer service, and factors under Operations’ control, such as processes, forms and systems, just to name a few, have a big impact on that experience.
