An online forum for thought leaders to discuss the challenges and opportunities impacting the changing world of banking.

Main

February 1, 2012

Key Drivers of Wholesale Banking

Banking activities extend much beyond the retail services which banks provide to individuals. Wholesale banking comprises underwriting, market making, consultancy, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fund management and the like. The clients in this case are business corporations, government entities and other institutional customers. 

Continue reading "Key Drivers of Wholesale Banking" »

Posted by Nirmal Khatua at 5:47 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 2, 2012

A Plan That Won't Fail

My neighbor's daughter has just been accepted into a top rung medical school.  But he has no time to rejoice, he's so busy trying to cough up the fee. 

Continue reading "A Plan That Won't Fail" »

Posted by Pallavi VJ at 4:22 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 15, 2011

Improving Customer Satisfaction Through Branch Banking

A small Danish bank enhances in-branch customer experience by displaying its products on shelves, as though they were physical merchandise.  A U.S. bank goes a step further. Its bank "stores" are designed for "slow banking", complete with Internet, cookies and cups of coffee.  One of them even has a hotline to the bank's president!  Clearly, banks have realized that the branch is no longer a mere place of transaction, but rather, a vital channel of customer experience delivery. 

Continue reading "Improving Customer Satisfaction Through Branch Banking" »

Posted by Hariharasudan Parthasarathy at 7:43 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 17, 2011

Retail Branch Banking : Time for A Makeover

A 62-year-old customer makes regular trips to the branch to discuss his finances. Why? Because he is not comfortable with the remoteness of self-service banking. Face-to-face interaction is what he wants.

Continue reading "Retail Branch Banking : Time for A Makeover" »

Posted by Saraswat Sarkar at 7:29 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 3, 2011

Branch Banking: How to Improve Customer Experience

According to a global survey of bank customers, the branch and the Internet are the most important banking channels.  This is yet another study which has debunked predictions that new banking channels would render branch banking obsolete. 

Continue reading "Branch Banking: How to Improve Customer Experience " »

Posted by Varun Goyal at 6:07 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 28, 2011

A new mission for branch banking

You'd think that the bank branch would have suffered amidst the hype about electronic channels. Well, think again. A study of 4,500 customers in U.S.A and Canada showed that two out of three had visited a branch in the past one year, and this was the most popular channel by a distance. Except in 2010, the number of branches has risen consistently in the U.S. since the mid 1990s. The global branch density stands at about 450 per million people.

Continue reading "A new mission for branch banking" »

Posted by Rajashekara V. Maiya at 3:56 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 22, 2011

Time to Get in Your Customers' Face

Banks are finding that customer acquisition and retention is like climbing a slippery slope and so are doing everything possible not to lose their grip. Over the years, they've discovered new, innovative ways of reaching their customers, to the point of following them wherever they go.

Continue reading "Time to Get in Your Customers' Face" »

Posted by Arunnima B S at 4:59 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 4, 2011

Schools and Banks: What's Common?

As a father of a 6 year old and someone who has a keen interest in alternate models of education, I've been fascinated by some of the talks by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity and education reforms. Some of his observations about the current schooling system have a strong parallel in the way the banking system was and is being governed.

Continue reading "Schools and Banks: What's Common?" »

Posted by Navin Rammohan at 6:10 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

June 29, 2010

Creating and keeping the right customer

Talk to the executives of any firm and they'll tell you how much their customers mean to them.  So, is customer-centricity nothing more than the latest marketing spiel? Not at all. The true sense of customer-centricity is to make a cultural shift from the traditional product or sales focus of a company to creating a consistently great experience for the customer. And recent research by a global think-tank shows that organizations fall woefully short in walking the talk. Despite a resounding majority of respondents asserting that customer experience was important or critical to their competitive strategy, few of their organizations were implementing this on the ground.

Continue reading "Creating and keeping the right customer" »

Posted by Dougal Edwards at 4:30 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 24, 2010

Achieving customer-centricity and delivering compelling customer experience

Before starting this blog series on customer-centricity, I'd like to dispel a common misconception by stating clearly that customer satisfaction does not equal loyalty. Satisfaction, although important, is just a snapshot in time of the customers' state of mind. Whereas loyalty is a measure of their willingness to further engage with the brand in question. A loyal customer results in repeat business and customer advocacy - the holy grail of the customer-centric organization.

Continue reading "Achieving customer-centricity and delivering compelling customer experience" »

Posted by Dougal Edwards at 6:11 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 26, 2009

Optimize the transaction life-cycle and win

What do you call a teenaged customer at a bank branch?
A hallucination.

That just about sums it up. Banking behaviour has undergone such a generational shift that all customers cannot be treated alike. Conventional segmentation by bank balance is no longer enough. It simply does not highlight differentiated individual needs. And the time’s come to think out of the box.

Continue reading "Optimize the transaction life-cycle and win" »

Posted by Rajashekara V. Maiya at 5:49 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 11, 2009

Segmentation Strategy: Harnessing the Power of One

Did you hear that one about the banker who said, “I know 20% of our customers bring 80% of the profits. I just don’t know which 20%.”. Often, customer segmentation can be like that - too broad based to offer any real insight. For the most part, banks segment their customers along the single dimension of relationship value, as though that one number says it all!

Continue reading "Segmentation Strategy: Harnessing the Power of One" »

Posted by Jaymalya Palit at 10:56 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 29, 2009

Bank on Client Relationships, Now.

While we were at the neighborhood store, my 12-yr old niece, who until recently was a big fan of sugar and spice and everything nice, suddenly piped up “But, they are out of low fat yogurt!” The floor manager heard this and sent his assistant rushing to the nearest super-mart to pick up a pack of low fat yogurt in her favorite flavor – raspberry.

Continue reading "Bank on Client Relationships, Now." »

Posted by Gautam Bandyopadhyay at 4:53 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 15, 2009

Banking on customer loyalty

So, who hasn’t suffered a sub-standard airline in order to earn reward miles? Or shopped till one dropped using a credit card that promised three times the usual points?

Continue reading "Banking on customer loyalty" »

Posted by Jaymalya Palit at 4:26 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 14, 2009

Meet your digital consumer on his turf

Don’t cold call your digital consumer. No, his phone is not switched off, but he’s busy using it to work on a project, with his partners separated across three continents. They meet up two days a week at this time on a popular social networking forum for grad students, to chat, exchange notes and share lecture videos. And don’t underestimate the “Community”. He will not open an account with you unless his chums online endorse.

Continue reading "Meet your digital consumer on his turf" »

Posted by Haragopal Mangipudi at 8:14 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 8, 2009

How hard do your customers work, for you?

Yes! You read that right! I was pondering about how banks can harness customer energies to steer their business, more meaningfully.

I think, there is a distinct merit in banks considering customers not merely as clients but as partners with whom to embark upon a joint exercise in wealth creation. Service strategies and innovations shaped by their ideas, suggestions….feedback…can form a dynamic core around which the business can be continuously evolved, profitably.

Continue reading "How hard do your customers work, for you?" »

Posted by Rajashekara V. Maiya at 5:09 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 26, 2009

Why’s it so difficult to understand, that it’s all about understanding that they need to understand?

Banks have long since known that they must speak the customers’ language to retain them. While the service experience itself must impress customers, it must not overwhelm them…like the last morsel of a chocolate bon bon that’s much too sweet to really relish. Just what customers need to know…addressing their prime concerns…and delivering it all in terms that they understand. That’s the simple-enough formula for success that banks can adopt.

Continue reading "Why’s it so difficult to understand, that it’s all about understanding that they need to understand?" »

Posted by Basudev Banerjee at 6:46 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 28, 2009

Is your bank’s board room ‘customer-sound’ proof?

Most bankers would have to nod their “yes”. And that’s unfortunately going to hit them where it hurts most – their customer retention and advocacy stats.

It’s really not so difficult to understand why banks investing so much in otherwise strengthening customer relationships will still not achieve desired customer-loyalty, if they do not take customer management and related issues straight into the board room. Would you commit to a deeper relationship with a person or organization, if you didn’t feel truly ‘heard’ and valued? Why should your banking customers think otherwise?

Continue reading "Is your bank’s board room ‘customer-sound’ proof?" »

Posted by Sanat Rao at 3:49 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Subscribe to this blog's feed

Follow us on

Finacle on Twitter


Recent Posts

Categories

Archives