Creating a customer insight program that drives business outcomes

Perhaps you’ve heard the relatively modern adage, “I’m only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.” It makes for interesting new-age philosophy, but it’s not a workable motto in the world of banking.

For any financial institution to succeed, it needs to ensure it’s not only saying the right things at the right times to the right account holders, in the right places, it needs to understand exactly how they perceive what they’re hearing and experiencing.

Does your institution really understand what your account holders need and how they perceive your ability to fulfill those needs? You may be more in the dark than you think, unless you have a robust customer insights or voice of the customer program in place.

We know from multiple studies that many consumers feel their banks don’t really understand them, and this is especially true among Millennials.

This important demographic also believes all banks are the same, that they won’t need traditional banks at all within a few years, and would be open to switching banks, according to the Millennial Disruption Index. A single switcher costs a financial institution $750 on average. At that cost, how many can your financial institution afford to lose?

Truly, all customers want to feel as if they’re being heard by the businesses to which the give their patronage, and feeling understood by their banks can lead account holders to greater engagement. A customer insight program can give you the data you need to create that feeling of familiarity and engagement.

A best-in-class program is built to listen, interpret, act and monitor.  Additionally, it should measure and report on key performance indicators, including:

• Overall customer experience
• Loyalty index
• Net promoters score
• Performance with employees
• Satisfaction with employees
• Satisfaction with wait time
• Online banking satisfaction

The steps toward gathering and using this information must include:

• Defining your performance goals
• Select evaluation criteria that meet your goals
• Train account holders how to provide relevant, usable information
• Recruit key account holders to participate in the program
• Train staff in how to manage data to create useful reports
• Train staff to evaluate collected data
• Establish an evaluation schedule
• Train managers on how to use the data
• Survey selected account holders, gather responses and process the data into actionable reports
• Using the refined data, plan initiatives to improve the account holder experience and enrich engagement

Of course, all of this takes a great deal of expertise and staff hours, so finding a great partner that brings expertise and can take on some of the time it takes to execute a great program makes so much sense. Deluxe Marketing Services for Customer Insights understands the changing face of the financial industry and the multitude of ways your customers interact with your organization.

Truly evaluating the front line employees from the eyes of your customers, and understanding customers from the eyes of your employees, is a critical component that informs your priorities. From there you can begin to understand of the customer experience components that are working well, and the ones that need your attention and action.

This content is accurate at the time of publication and may not be updated.