Banking institutions struggle to keep up with the unpredictable and fluctuating nature of consumers’ tolerance for service that does not meet their expectations. In adapting to customer tolerances, banks and credit unions need to consider the four essential elements that make up the customer experience: Products, Processes, People and Channels. To win customer loyalty, financial organization need CX metrics that accurately reflect customers’ mindset at a given time; then they need to translate it so they can act on it immediately.
Takeaways:
- Recent anxiety-provoking events have depleted consumers’ willingness to put up with subpar customer service.
- Product, Process, People and Channel all need to be measured as elements constituting the customer experience; proper metrics will accurately reveal where your customers encounter frustration.
- To ensure an accurate picture of their customers, banks and credit unions need the right analytics, data-driven decision making, expert guidance, and determined action.
Financial institutions are finding out the hard way that there is no playbook for dealing with the challenges that continue to arise from COVID-19. Consumers’ tolerance of service that does not meet their expectations is constantly fluctuating, like the weather or the stock market. Your bank or credit union customers may have been more accepting of subpar performance when the pandemic first hit. Don’t be fooled – they are now stressed and fatigued by the prolonged changes, and less willing to put up with the friction they encounter. Despite claims to the contrary, it is impossible to predict the degree of customer tolerance at this point in time. It is fluid in nature, and as diverse as each bank or credit union, each demographic, each customer and each transaction.
Before COVID, your customers knew what to expect from your service, and you knew how to deliver accordingly. Now, there’s no norm or baseline against which to measure their degree of frustration. But if you’re not giving your customers what they need today – right NOW – the more frayed their relationship with you becomes. The risk is too high to leave to guesswork.
People are understandably anxious over the health of their loved ones, their finances, social unrest, their children’s education, divisive politics, access to affordable health insurance, the possibility of having to relocate – exhausting, isn’t it? So it comes as no surprise that this pervasive mindset has caused tolerance for bad service, no matter where in the customer journey it is encountered, to evaporate – leaving a stark fault line fracturing your customer loyalty.
A four-fold CX approach keeps your metrics and scores honest
Low tolerance or not, four essential elements – Product, Process, People and Channel – constitute the entire customer experience. Each of these needs to be considered, because each impacts how your customers experience you, even if they can’t express the strain their level of tolerance is under. After all, it is not their responsibility to put it into words. It is YOURS. And if you are not willing or able to listen and then change based on their frustrations, you will have to deal with the impact to your customer base and your bottom line.
Take the case – and I have actually seen it – where a financial institution limits its survey questions to employee interaction as a category in which to respond. The customer being surveyed might rate an employee’s service highly, if that person ultimately resolved their issue, but may still have experienced frustrations in getting to that person (e.g., being transferred to numerous departments). Because the given score doesn’t reflect a four-fold approach to the customer experience, it cannot be confidently relied upon. As an indicator of customer loyalty or satisfaction, your scores are only as good as the People, Channel, Product, and/or Process you are measuring. A good NPS or CSAT score might be covering up very real customer frustrations – and ignoring what may be driving people away from you.
To get a complete picture, tolerances and all, bank and credit union leadership must ask itself:
- Are we getting the VALUABLE intel we really need from our CX data – information we can use to guide us toward our goals and measure progress in that direction?
- Do our scores give us a TRUE picture of the entire customer experience, and how it stacks up against our customers’ tolerances?
- Do we know EXACTLY when and where our customers are encountering friction in doing business with us, and to what degree they are willing to tolerate it?
Banks and Credit Unions: Do these three things with your data – quickly!
To prevent a misleading and potentially harmful disconnect between your CX metrics and your members’ deepest frustrations, you need to do these three things:
1. Capture the right data and customer intel
2. Translate the data swiftly and accurately
3. Respond to the data immediately, pivoting in the right way at the right time
Like the weather or the stock market, fluctuations in your customers’ tolerances are inevitable. What you are able to gauge today might become unmeasurable overnight. Fortunately, with the right analytics, some data-driven decision making, expert guidance to keep you on course, and determined action, the long-term forecast for you and your members can be very sunny.
Ask Yourself:
- What are your most valuable analytics?
- What metrics are most useful to you in managing the customer experience?
- Are your analytics a source of insight, or frustration?
- What changes have you observed in your customers’ mindset this past year?
Banking execs: For more how-to’s on getting the most value out of your CX data, take a look at my article on “7 Keys to Operationalize Your Credit Union’s CX Analytics.”
