The strategy failed. The bank had focused on cross-selling, and had neglected the fact that the exodus of customers reflected a lack of trust and a widespread feeling that banks were working in their own interests, not those of the customer. The bank had failed to address the bigger picture: its customers’ experience.
Customer experience, though not a new concept, has become an increasing concern for companies thanks to the twin trends of social media and personalisation. These trends have seen customer expectations shift towards increasingly customised products and integrated services that are delivered to them via the device or channel they prefer. Companies continue to struggle to grasp and respond to the potential offered by this trio – customer experience, social media and personalisation - because the key to using them successfully is rooted in emotion. Customer experience is simultaneously about meeting and exceeding customer expectations. It’s about representing a brand today and laying the groundwork for what the brand will stand for tomorrow. Within this amorphous idea lies the key to retaining current customers and attracting new ones.
Jonathan Salem Baskin, a marketing consultant, irreverently pointed out in a recent post (Tell the truth) that “people don’t wake up in the morning wishing they had closer relationships with their toothpaste brand”. As executives have struggled to grasp what customer experience should mean for their organisation, they have often become trapped between two extremes. At one end is the idea that Mr Baskin highlights, that companies somehow need to form an intimate connection based on shared understanding with their customers. And, at the other end, that customer experience can be understood and quantified in terms of ROI and quarterly goals alone.
The challenge for the bank in the above example is that a key element of its customers’ experience lay in changing something external to them – the widespread anti-bank feeling post-financial crisis. Many companies struggle with this; and while the bank in question cannot expect to change public perception across the board, they do need to consider any customer experience strategy within that broader context, rather than looking at the numbers alone.
