Customer Delight in BANKS.

Mohit Narwal (62), Davis Lazarus (09), Seethal (43)

The truth about customersTen times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep a current customer

- Bain & Company Research

Customers are lost primarily due to indifference (66%) versus dissatisfaction (14%) - WSJ

Customer Delight? Delighted customers are those where

you anticipate their needs, provide solutions to them before they ask and where you are observing to see if new and/or additional expectations are about ready to be required.

Actually

Customer expectations are typically not very high

Your job is to surprise them

Customer Delight is doing what they haven’t even imagined

What will cause them to say WOW!

You know what you can do - they don’t

Benefits of creating a customerdelight Increases the customer loyalty. It causes new customers to come. It distinguishes you from the rest. It allows you to sell your product or

service for more money then competition.

It allows you to make more return on your investment.

It allows you to reward your employees.

Why Should We Be Concerned?

In the average business, for each customer who complains there are 26 who feel the same way and don’t speak up.

The customers who feel poorly served will tell between 8 and 16 people about their negative experience.

- Technical Assistance Research, Inc.

Satisfaction v/s delight

When satisfaction scores exceed the upper threshold of a customer’s zone of tolerance does a service experience have a lasting impact by creating customer delight.

Customer delight is conceptualized as an emotional response, which results from surprising and positive levels of performance.

What is really important to intentions and future behavior is not satisfaction itself but the emotional response to the experience.

Although meeting expectations can satisfy, it is the emotional response to a surprise—whether delight or outrage—that has a real impact on customer loyalty.

Cross-sectional consumer behavior research found that the cluster of consumers reporting the highest levels of surprise and joy were more satisfied than others.

Customer delight in service sector

Contd.

“We want to go beyond satisfying customers, we want to delight them”Satisfaction

When a Bank knows, understands and meets customer wants, expectations and needs

Delight – or the ‘Wow!’ factorWhen a Bank goes beyond customer needs

and exceeds expectations

In a hi-tech world, customers keep raising the bar on expectations, making delight a rare emotion.

Over the last 10 years, technology has created immense delight Buying a train ticket from an ATM machine Internet Banking – full control to the

customer Paying a utility bill over the phone Cash and cheque deposit machines –

instant credit with a receipt Anywhere banking – access your account

from any ATM across the world…So now you can see how technology is

continually raising the bar on customer expectations

So, is customer delight an impossible objective for banks? Not really, but it does require a high level of

understanding of our customersTechnology by itself no longer excites customers.

It is how we use technology that will become critical

Service and Brand are the key differentiators – so what is the role of technology in creating this difference?○ Technology to staff to produce delight○ Technology at the point of self-service delivery

Segment customers – this is critical because it is unlikely that the Bank will be able to delight all categories of customers in exactly the same way

Only focused investment in technology will produce Customer Delight Example – Mortgage unit of leading Bank

Seeing large attrition – surveys showed call centre service to be an issue

Invested in a state-of-the-art call centre solution and also increased the number of people at the call centre

Customer satisfaction surveys jumped but attrition continued

Delight for these customers came from competitors who pro-actively offered them a lower re-finance rate

Possible requirement was a profiling system that more accurately modeled risk of existing customers to reduce their rate before attrition

Technology to staff to produce delight Interestingly, it is often the junior most

staff in an organisation who can produce customer delight

Same customer information at all points – collect customer information at all touch points – you can never have enough customer information!

Customer offers can be more targeted Financial attitude surveys to indicate financial personalities

somewhat akin to Meyers-Briggs personality profiles. Help a bank determine product need and focus offers more

effectively. Wells Fargo is one early adopter.

Some Recent Examples of Technology enabling staff to produce delight Auto Credit Enhancement

Mini score-card at the call centre front-end Premier cash advance

The ability to give a Rs. 2.5 Lakh cash advance to a customer when he/she is overseas.

Instant PIN at the Branch or at the call centreImmediate access to the account instead of

waiting 5 days for a PIN to arrive Ability to link a credit card to a Savings

account

Technology at the point of self service delivery Mix of notes from the ATM Speech Recognition at the call centre Alerts on credit card usage Banks will have to continually evolve

alternate delivery channels so as to produce customer delightIndividual Solutions at the Call CentreInternet account aggregation across

different banks

Satisfaction Continuum Dissatisfied customer – is an angry

customer. He may not express it to the Bank (mostly not) but will tell friends. Competition will soon find out

Satisfied customer – is an indifferent customer. He will not talk about his experience to anyone unless surveyed

Delighted customer – is a happy customer. He will express his delight to the Bank and his friends. Apart from high loyalty, he will be the Bank’s most credible sales person

Customer Delight Vs Loyalty

Many companies pursuing quality consider customer satisfaction to be their objective.

Customer satisfaction is not an effective quality goal.

Satisfied customers don't necessarily develop brand loyalty just because they got what they asked for or paid for.

Customer loyalty can only be assured by continuously delighting and surprising customers.

The table below illustrates the four levels of customer service:

Need Stated by Customer

Service Received by Customer

Dissatisfaction YES Below customer expectations

Satisfaction YES Within customer expectations

Delight NO Within customer expectations

Surprise NO Beyond customer expectations

Examples of Customer Delight:

Releasing a loan before the scheduled date, e.g. 50% shorter processing time.

Greeting the customer and thanking him after and

every transaction with the bank-- withdrawal, deposit, inquiry, loan or card application, etc.

Finacle inclusion solution arms banks with a two way messaging infrastructure to alert field agents and bank staff through SMS. This is supplemented by a secure mailbox. The solution also has extensive offline transaction processing capabilities, supported by a robust synchronization engine.

Banks should offer personally optimal banking solutions, rather than one-size-fits-all products to forge long-term relationships and customer satisfaction.

Hand-carrying the cheque (loan proceeds) to the client's (borrower's)office without his requesting such services.

Apologizing to the client after having him wait longer than usual or after causing him any kind of inconvenience or discomfort.

The bank’s best sales people The objective of Total Quality Management (TQM)

is to create and retain customers who would not only buy but also endorse your products and services.

Customers are the best salespeople because they are users of your products.

Their desire to endorse them to their friends comes from the sincere delight and surprise.

The best quality strategy is to develop life-long customers by continuously delighting and surprising them ahead of the competition.

Customer’s voice-icici bank The mobile alerts given to debit and credit card

holders is a wonderful innovation. Any time you loose your card or any successful attempt is made you will be alerted. This helps us to communicate with ICICI Bank and get the transactions stopped on the card. An excellent customer service initiative.

I would like to thank the entire team in Customer Service for the excellent service provided to me. My complaint was promptly attended and redressed. A member of the customer service team from India even called me in Bahrain and informed me of the action taken on my complaint. I am very much impressed about the attention paid by ICICI bank to the complaint of a minor account holder like me.

South Indian bank I appreciate the employee of SIB for solving all my

demat queries in a fantastic manner and I also appreciate her efforts and service. She understood all my Queries and gave a good resolution. And she was very professional. I appreciate the way she explained me everything. She was very good.

I was very impressed with the service provided by Ms.Smitha of your office. She was very prompt, responsive and eager to help kind of person. She understood my problem carefully, listened to my tantrums & frustrations and still answered with smile. Talking to her was delighting. My best wishes to this young dynamic & helpful lady.

Thank you