Why are Banking Experiences Missing the Mark?

You’d be hard-pressed to find an industry that wasn’t taking a painstaking look at their customer experiences. It’s thrown around on blogs and industry news articles. It’s splashed in large typeface up and down my LinkedIn feed. We get it. Businesses care about people’s experiences with them. So, why are banks falling way below the mark?

They’re asking the wrong people.

A large chunk of financial marketing departments are desperately trying to look at the data (so bank of them) and coming up with a whole lot of nada. Why? Because they’re asking themselves. So many surveys look for senior marketers to tell them what is most important in developing a good CX. And why wouldn’t they? Who knows more about marketing wins and losses than a CMO? Answer: The people that live on the fence. This will be difficult to hear, but CMOs are biased. They try not to be. But they are. Surveys need to focus on the ambivalent. They are the ones who will really tell you where you’re going wrong.

They’re asking the wrong questions.

According to The Financial Brand, “The Most Important Attributes of the Customer Experience” survey is miserably attempting to hone in on the real downfalls of the banking experience. It’s fraught with contradictions, inconsistencies and redundancies. Studies should be exhaustive, but not ridiculous.

From the Financial Brand:

If 75% of respondents believe that “fast response times to issues, needs, or complaints” is important to the (so-called) customer experience…

…then how can only 23% believe that “fast, easy-to-use tools and service options” are important?

If 52% of respondents believe that “knowledgeable staff ready to assist whenever and wherever the customer needs” is important…

…then how can only 37% believe that “a person to speak with, regardless of time and location” is important? What’s the difference between the two options?

If 55% believe that “consistency of experience across channels” is important…

…then how can only 26% think that “readily available, multi-channel information” is important?

And Finally

Here’s a question for the marketers who said “fast response times…” is important:

How do you think that happens, if not with “knowledgeable staff,” “multiple channels of engagement,” “readily available multi-channel information,” and “multiple touchpoints that add value to the customer”?

See what I mean? If you don’t ask the right questions, the answers you get are worthless.

They’re forgetting the universal truth.

No one experiences the same object, person, or action in the same way. Not great news for marketers with analytical minds, but amazing news for financial marketers who love a good challenge. Scientists and data analysts have been trying since the beginning to quantify experiences. The closest we’ve come are the social sciences and that will NEVER be an exhaustive study of the human experience.

We’ll probably never find a number that shows us who will like what and when and where, but financial marketers can take a few steps forward to improve their CX. All they need to do is ask the right questions to the right people and take both positive and negative feedback in stride. If you’re trying to improve the CX of your financial branch, contact us today. We’ve got tons of experience designing spaces that reduce friction and improve the overall customer experience with build times 30%-50% faster than traditional stick-and-brick construction.