| |
How are you checking?
The best read of the month for me is usually Fast Company magazine
and the July/August issue was no exception. There’s a wonderful
article about how a young Brand Experience expert took the crusty
Credit Suisse bankers through a simple investigative process so
they could see Credit Suisse in the same way that their customers
do. And not with their usual millions of dollars of Market Research,
but with simple observation and – get this – actually
talking to clients.
He opened the whole subject during a presentation to 200 of the
senior bankers who were busy with their Blackberrys and not the
least bit interested… until he announced he was going
to call the Credit Suisse customer service line LIVE from the
podium! He did. They got his point.
He then began an immersion program where he would take a banker
to three branches: first just to observe customers in action,
second to perform a typical customer task (currency exchange)
and, at the third branch, to ask customers questions and to use
the website to check out current mortgage rates.
The customer service improvements are already underway. Two branches
are being redesigned, they’ve implemented an initiative to
reduce wait times, one to simplify signage and another to ensure
they have friendly, helpful employees.
What would the brand coach suggest?
When I did something similar with the senior brass of BMO last year,
I picked a branch a half block from the King Street head office.
Two of the five people didn’t even know there was a branch
there! Once they did find it, they could easily see why in the clutter
customers couldn’t find a particular service offering.
On another occasion, when we interviewed Oxford Properties tenants
about why they didn’t like the customer service provided by
the management of the buildings in which they worked, we learned
that most people simply didn’t know how to call when they had
a problem.
And, in a recent ThinkAudit survey we completed for a Wealth Management
company, we discovered that the industry’s vocabulary had shifted
and customers no longer understood the unique offering.
Do it. Get out and look and listen.
Download
Adobe Acrobat
|
