A wish list for your bank

[Dave A]

This evening I attended a customer forum organised by my bank (in chief, at least). What they were looking for was ideas on how they could improve.

What came up was quite interesting. Topics included teller and information queue management, meeting customer relations consultants and managers, call centres, statement handling, online banking, auto-tellers, parking, credit application procedures... There was still a steady stream of suggestions from a group of customers who, as it turned out, were very satisfied with this branch of the bank.

It made me think of two things:

• Just how much valuable feedback you can get from happy clients, and
• What would an unhappy group of clients have said.

So here's my idea.

Make a post saying whether you are a happy or unhappy client of your bank, and what suggestions you have for your bank to improve.

[Marq]

I don't think you have any takers here, Dave.

Main reason, is that we do not have enough time to compile long lists, that no one will do anything about to resolve - certainly not the banks senior employees, who couldn't give a toss about their customers, that they see as a hindrance getting in the way of their next golf game.

I have been offering my bank, (and yours I believe) suggestions for a number of years at odd times as problems arise, without any success - they keep doing the same thing, which is typical of a bureaucratic sluggish monster run by inept employees.

I am still waiting for the local branch manager to come round and visit us, as she promised to do three years ago. I have no idea whether she is still there as the manager - That says it all for me.
The only reason I knew she existed, was when I was trying to help them with fraud problems that they had no idea on how to handle. She appeared like magic at our informal meeting, said a few words that meant nothing and wafted off back into the corridors never to be seen again.

Your post says it all:-

• organised by the bank (of course)
• who have happy customers (Never met one yet)

Spin Doctoring BS I thinks.

[Dave A]

I am still waiting for the local branch manager to come round and visit us, as she promised to do three years ago. I have no idea whether she is still there as the manager - That says it all for me.

One of the issues raised was related. In fact there was quite a lot said about account managers/relationship managers/whatever.

There is a steady flow of account managers and we only "discover" a change when we want to see one. I'm one of those nutters who likes to sit down with my manager once a year and run over options, even if I'm not really looking for any finance. It makes a big difference to me as to whether I'm talking to someone for the first time, or someone who has already been briefed on our suit of businesses.

Managers are allocated to accounts, and I suggested it would be useful to drop a note to the account holder when their account manager changes. They were pretty receptive, particularly in respect of doing this for business accounts.

[Marq]

We will see if this ever becomes a reality.

I believe the turnover of these so called relationship/business/makeupyourownname/managers is too high for them to implement a notification story. You will be getting a new note every month.

An idea could be a personalised email from 'your local branch team' every now and again allowing for a back and forth correspondence could work. Not the 'we are telling you stuff - if you have a problem phone our useless helpline call centre'. Initially there may be a lot of stuff but this would smooth out and the main line would be in place should you feel the need to 'talk' to your bank.
Simple, Basic, Involved

[Dave A]

I believe the turnover of these so called relationship/business/makeupyourownname/managers is too high for them to implement a notification story.

I asked if that turnover rate was policy (keep everyone moving to stop mischief), but apparently not. If a post comes up as available, anyone can apply and hence the musical chairs.

Simple, Basic, Involved

[duncan drennan]

One of the things that FNB offers which I quite like is the option for a paperless credit card statement (which I make use of). They only send me an email then, which I find more convenient than the paper version (even if you print it out, at least it saves on all the transport).

I'd like to see the other banks offering this for all of their statements, etc.

For instance, Absa constantly sends us change to bond instalment notices every time we move money out of our bond (there is a fair amount of in and out as money flows in and out). I wish they could just send me those electronically - it would probably save them a lot of money (and be more efficient for everyone).

[Karenwhe]

So here's my idea.

Make a post saying whether you are a happy or unhappy client of your bank, and what suggestions you have for your bank to improve.

I personally think it could work. But it would take a not so small task to get it done. This is what I personally think could work.

• Put up a site just for this (neutral ground)
• Get together a few forums like this one (I would also help with our forum and lists) to get a few thousand of people to contribute.
• Get a list of complaints from the users.
• Get the most common complaints to be voted on and commented (on the neutral ground site).
• Find the Customer relationship managers at the banks and send them to this site
• Get a few media people involved to write about this (they love this kind of stuff).
• Then get a few heavy blogger to blog about this
• Then get a few heavy diggers to bookmark everywhere this site.

Your job is done. If this will not help to change stuff - nothing will. But don't expect overnight change. You are dealing with heavy weight organizations.

At least either way, you will learn much from such an exercise both in executing such a big task and getting the knowledge and maybe having some banks change a few of their procedures.

What I can say, is.... that I believe our lists will participate, because they are dependent on banks to do their business heavily.

[Dave A]

• Put up a site just for this (neutral ground)

OK. So this is not neutral enough?

Karen, I've tossed together a quick website on blogger called Banking Wishlist - How about that? I've even allowed anonymous comment posting.

My idea is that sites (or "lists" for that matter) that promote the blog would get a credit in the supporting sites block.

Let me know what you think (or just promote the heck out of it anyway).

[Karenwhe]

OK. So this is not neutral enough?

You know what I mean. It has to bee to that purpose alone. Because if we want the world of SA to come to it and convince the biggest list owners, it must not look like an exercise to move users around

Karen, I've tossed together a quick website on blogger called
Banking Wishlist - How about that? I've even allowed anonymous comment posting.

It looked at the site it looks great. Here are some comments.

1. The first page must be the vision. Why is this site up, what is the site trying to achieve, how this can be achieved, how will you benefit if we achieve this and EXACT steps of what can you [the visitor] do to helps achieve this.

2. You must have opened sections/categories to each major bank, where people go and give their views and point.

3. The next thing [later] is a poll. We will need a poll later as people comment about their biggest frustrations and suggestion to put up a poll maybe which will be a summary. The reason it is not good to put it up at the very beginning is because we are not aware of what to put in the poll.... what are the biggest public interest frustrations and their wishes.

My idea is that sites (or "lists" for that matter) that promote the blog would get a credit in the supporting sites block.

I think that is a good idea. I will definitely promote it, but I need to see it ready.

The vision must be there.

Then the categories must be there and ready and then the steps of what each person can contribute to make this effect must be there. (e.g. What can you do to get a better service: You can comment on this blog about your frustrations and what solution you would like, you can blog about this in your blog often and send people to here to achieve mass response, you can send a message to your subscribers about this... if you send a message to your subscribers, you need to inform us about this and you will get a link as a contributor, to send this message go here to get a pre-written message).

It has to be very clear how you get credit for supporting and what you must do and what are the steps. Because this makes it easy for site owners to do the steps (after all they didn't think about this, and therefore may be confused if not given text and instructions). Always make life easy for people and then they do this. If they think it is too much effort, they bail.

If you need ideas how to do the steps for people to promote this in a way that you can track let me know.

Anyway, I wrote this whole thing pretty fast, if stuff is confusing just let me know.

Then we need to find on the web heavy diggers and heavy bloggers, without them you won't see the light of the day enough to get fast mass response.

Here is an example of what was done in the past about one company Virgin media http://stopvirgin.movielol.org/

This is totally out there and it got attention (close to 1 Million views), but it is just an example about one thing that people did not like about something that one company did.

[Dave A]

Hmm. I admit my idea isn't a crusade against banks - it's about ways of collecting information and ideas that might improve our experience.

My theory is that pure common/business sense might see some of those ideas implimented, and there might be some really interesting ideas come up. This is more carrot than stick.

I picked on banks because most of us use them, there is a variety of client perceptions, and many client relationship principles relating to the industry apply to many other business forms too.