OPINION
Customer
experience
management in
private banking
Satisfying the customer needs to go beyond the traditional processes
that have been used in previous years. By Andrew Cook
B
Andrew Cook
usinesses have always recognised the importance of, and value in, treating
their best customers with kid gloves and trying to anticipate their needs.
There are few spaces where this is more evident than in the private banking
sector, where customers’ expectations are higher and tolerance of poor service
or superfluous enquiries is low. This is because the clients are sensitive about
their money and are easily enraged when they think it is being mishandled,
or if their needs are not being met.
Sound customer experience management (CEM) systems and practices not only help to keep
existing customers happy, but also highlight opportunities to go above and beyond customer
expectations by anticipating their needs, and offering them additional and appropriate products
or services. Being able to do this requires an understanding of the customer’s journey, or the
start-to-finish steps of how a customer engages with a company.
I call these steps ‘moments of truth’, which can be broken down into ‘moments of magic’ or
‘moments of misery’. The former encourages loyalty, as well as word-of-mouth recommendations,
which remain the best marketing tool on earth. Of course, moments of misery cause frustration
and highlight failures in a company’s processes.
In the banking sector, whether commercial or retail, process optimisation is vital and CEM
plays a vital role in ensuring processes run smoothly and clients are satisfied. Banks often have
separate divisions for transactional accounts, savings accounts, credit and other financial
services, yet these often service the same customers.
This makes a robust CEM system all the more important and valuable, because private banking
customers expect the bank to have an overview of their entire portfolio. By having this sort of
visibility, each division is better positioned to tailor its offerings to particular clients, while avoiding
the risk of approaching them with a redundant or inappropriate offer.
For example, knowing that a customer has recently extended the overdraft facility on his/her
cheque account will inform the decision making of a member of the credit division, who may be
tasked with encouraging a client to raise their credit limit. With the right CEM strategy, divisions
need never deliberately communicate with one another, nor risk failing to do so, while still
avoiding the potential pitfalls that a lack of visibility introduces – such as causing frustration
for a customer when each department is unaware of other products a customer uses, needs
or does not want to engage with.
While this sort of visibility is useful for all banking clients, it’s particularly important for those
who qualify, or pay a premium, for private banking services. Typically, their expectations are
understandably higher, and this means that each step, or moment of truth needs to be defined,
unpacked and monitored more closely. Those moments of magic can quickly turn to misery
without a CEM strategy guiding each step of the customer journey. Conversely, the most
demanding of customers can easily be satisfied if it is clear to them that each department
has a clear understanding of the customer’s journey.
Andrew Cook is the CEO of Customer Care Solutions.
Edition 12 | BANKERSA
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