The Employee Factor

Have you ever noticed how banks are always telling us that they’re working for us, putting the customer first, tailoring their products and services to meet our individual needs? For the most part, banks have been making big strides in the move towards becoming more “customer centric”, but a recent study by McDaniel Partner shows they still have a long way to go.

The study was designed to assess the effectiveness of the frontline at both handling basic customer needs, while delivering on the basic tenets of customer service. We focused on the basics, as so many banks are surprisingly still ineffective at delivering a consistent experience, every time their customers interact with them.

The 60 Canadian bank branches that we visited were randomly selected by our team. The study tested two areas of customer needs – opening a banking account or applying for a mortgage or line of credit. We rated each visit across the following dimensions:

1. Did they deliver on basic customer service standards?
2. Did they gather facts, and conduct a needs assessement?
3. Did they try to close the sale?

Here’s what we found…

Did they Deliver on Basic Customer Service Standards?
• 15% did not make the customer feel welcome, either through words or actions.
• 25% did not faciliate a personal hand-off from one individual to another.
• 30% did not provide an opportunity to speak to the appropriate person.
• 25% of the frontline staff did not introduce themselves by name.
• 30% of frontline staff did not ask for or use the customer’s name.

Did they Gather Facts and Conduct a Needs Assessment? When passed to a Financial Services Representative (FSRs), we found the following:
• 90% of the FSRs did not pick up on basic customer cues.
• 75% of the FSRs did not try to find out more detail about the customer.
• 60% of the FSRs did not attempt to sell beyond the immediate need identified by us.

Did They Try to Close the Sale?
• 70% did not try to sell us a mortgage, even though we said we were house hunting.
• 25% of the FSRs did not try to match products/services to our stated needs.
• 70% did not try to schedule a next step discussion or appointment.
• 75% stated customer service was their differentiator, but few knew what that meant.

The results of this study demonstrate that banks continue to fall short in their ability to deliver a differentiated customer experience. As well, they are failing to captialize on selling opportunities and are losing prospective customers, day-in and day-out.
From our perspective, a bank will never create the experience they desire unless they are able to deliver both a consistent service and sales experience. This requires frontline an engaged frontline! Remember: service = sales = service.