InsightIQ Blog

CRM - The Devil is in the Details!

Oct 6 2009

I work in the business of Customer Relationship Management and have seen many companies achieve considerable success in finding and keeping profitable customers. However some of my own personal experiences make me wonder whether companies are too focused on the forest and not spending enough time on the trees. Or, to put it another way, focusing on a concept as grand as the "Customer Relationship" assumes that there are customers out there who think of how they deal with large companies or brands in the same way as they think of their personal relationships. That is often not the case. From a customer's perspective, the "relationship" with their bank, say, is often viewed as just a series of individual experiences of specific transactions or events. There is very little true "loyalty" present, and what little there is can easily be eroded or destroyed by a bad experience.

Let me illustrate using a recent example ...

I deposited a check for the proceeds from a house sale in one of our two checking accounts. I did this at an ATM which I have found to be a very convenient new service form my bank, which is one of the nation's largest. As it happened the account I chose was the one on which my wife is not named - she is a named account holder on the other (there is no logic to why we did this, just a random choice at the time). Several days later I checked our accounts online and saw the pending deposit but then also saw an unexplained reversal of the same amount.

Given the sum involved I immediately called the bank to see what was going on. Their IVR system is one of the most complex I have dealt with but after some time I managed to break out of their pre-defined menu structure (why does it never have the option I want?) to talk to a real-live person.

The first time I called they couldn't pull up the check image so they asked me to call back the next day. When I did that I was told that I had been talking to the wrong department. I was therefore rerouted to another department and had to go through the same set of "security" questions several times, at one point being told that my drivers' license number did not match what they have on file, even though I originally opened my accounts with the same number.

Once we got past that we were able to talk about my rejected check deposit. So get this ... it turns out that because the check had both my wife and my name on it, it had been rejected because I tried to deposit it into the account where I am the sole named account holder. Fair enough - I can see that logic, but what gets me is this - they were able to see that we are joint account holders on our other account but were unable to allow me to simply transfer the funds to that second account. Instead they are going to mail the check back to me (it will take seven to ten business days) preceded by an explanatory letter which will arrive in the next two to three days! Could this be any more inefficient?!

My point is simply this - don't talk about having a "relationship" with me if you cannot even execute a simple transaction such as this. People want the basics - products which meet their needs, competitive pricing and efficient service. One you have those in place then we can talk about dating ...

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Niall Budds
Director, Client Management

Niall delivers client relationship management and advances the Quaero Solutions Group capabilities and intellectual capital in marketing operations. He applies best practice techniques and technologies to deliver continuous improvement in…