What if your Best Customers were leaving, but you didn’t know why?

Why do your Best Customers leave?  Maybe customer experience is the cause.

Mark Hurst, in his blog “Good Experience,” wrote a post called “A Bank Customer Experience,” which chronicles his experience with his (now former) bank.  Despite years with the bank, after receiving just one letter and making one call to the call center, his experience led him to open an account with a new bank.

In short, here is what happened:

1. He received a fax from his bank (since when does anyone fax information any more?), telling him that he had to make account changes in the next six days or face a fine.  Unfortunately, the fax was filled with acronyms, making it impossible for him to even figure out what to do.  As he described it, the fax was filled with “several lines of notifications, transaction numbers, and IDs, all in a mix of digits and cryptic, all-capital abbrevations.”
2. He was able to find a phone number on the fax, “for questions.”  The service rep asked him for information he could not find and then told him that he had to change one of the acronyms, because “the bank was transferring their retail branches to a global bank” — in effect, the bank had sold off the branches to another entity and customers had to make changes quickly or face fines (way to make it your customer’s problem!).  It was clear that the service rep thought he was a bit dumb not to understand the banking terms, from her tone and replies.

That was all it took.  As Hurst describes it, “Later that same day I opened a new account at a new bank. It was as good an experience as this had been bad.”

Now think about how this transaction would be viewed in the bank:

1. A usability specialist would be pleased, since the task was 100% completed on the first try.
2. A branding specialist would be pleased, since the logo was clearly visible.
3. The mass marketer would be pleased, since he later received a new brochure touting the benefits of the new organization

It would only be the customer experience expert that might see anything amiss, and those amiss factors were large enough to cause almost immediate customer attrition.  He describes the reality of the experience as “The fax was confusing and threatening, the long-distance phone call was flawed, and the glossy brochure, which arrived after the fax, is the kind of corporate happy-speak that I’d expect from the mega-bank that bought their branches.”

How can you avoid losing Best Customers through customer experience flaws?  Here are four No Excuses Marketing strategies:

1. Know to whom you speak. By recognizing both high value and high potential customers before key information must be sent, an organization can develop processes to smooth out transitions.
2. Reach out and touch someone. Pick up the phone!  If this transition had been handled initially by someone from the call center, or ideally from the customer’s branch, questions could have been easily addressed and crisis adverted.
3. Check and double check. When you are impacting the customers who the bank’s success relies on, it is vital to check back after a proactive contact, to help correct any issues proactively.
4. Set warnings for specific customer behaviors. Some customers will only signal their intentions through their behavior, not through what they tell you.  So watch for balance changes, account closings, and movement to shorter term products — these may also be signs of impending attrition.

Remember that research has suggested that unhappy customers tell many more people about their experiences than happy ones.  So make sure to “read the signs” of poor customer experience, correct them quickly and then enhance processes to eliminate them before you lose any more Best Customers.

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• Read: Take Stock In Customer Experience Leaders @ Customer Experience Matters (fredzimny.wordpress.com)
• Why developing solid Service Principles are so important ” Proto Partners’ Service Design Blog (fredzimny.wordpress.com)
• 5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer (ducttapemarketing.com)
• Customer Experience is Not about Coffee (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)

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Tagged as: Banking Services, best customer experience, CRM, Customer Centricity, Customer experience, Customer Management, Customer retention, Customer service, Database marketing, Financial Services