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Cheers - Where Everybody Knows Your Name

 

Nostalgia is a great thing, wouldn't you agree?  It invokes the feelings of youth, the idealism of a different time, and the desire to belong to something bigger than ourselves.  We recently visited a bank's annual sales meeting and walked away with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.

Within a turbo-charged event laced with adrenaline and achievement, this bank unveiled its theme for 2008:  "Cheers - Where Everybody Knows Your Name."  Wow, that brought back memories!  Cheers aired for 11 seasons beginning in 1982.  It was based on a neighborhood bar in Boston where regular customers spent a few hours together every day talking about their problems, laughing at each other's flaws, and being there when they were needed - in the one place where everyone knew your name.  The quirky sitcom epitomizes a customer interaction for this bank: a place where the customer has a chance to be heard and also receives empathy and advice based on his / her individual needs.

 

What a retail banking model!  It begins with the simple concepts of being recognized and appreciated for who and where you are in life.  Let's take a look. "Hi Mr. Smith, how are you today and how are those grandchildren?"  Such simple pleasantries, long forgotten, truly give a person a sense of recognition and belonging to the greatest family of all...humanity.  At FSS, we have discovered that customers really seek the following basic behaviors in a relationship with their banks:

• Competency - customers want to deal with people who know their jobs, products, and services

• Courtesy - customers want to deal with people who treat them with respect and who make them feel welcome and appreciated

• Concern - customers want to deal with people who are sincerely interested in helping solve their problems and meet their needs
  

Believe it or not, there are U.S. companies working diligently to automate this relational type of customer interaction experience.  Let's hope they're more successful than the person who created the automated telephone answering technology which causes you to get lost in numerous menus and then gives you a recording that says, "Your call is important to us; please continue to hold."  This was designed to provide better service and create better relationships with customers, when, in all honesty, if companies really cared about providing good service and building positive relationships with customers, they would have real people answering our calls.  It's all about people.  People earn and build relationships with other people.  Have you ever heard of a machine or piece of technology that created a relationship with a customer?

 

Let's return to Cheers - a place where you belong and where everybody knows your name.  Before further alienating customers with another technology solution meant to supplement a basic customer relationship, maybe we should be nostalgic for a moment, and remember a time when competency, courtesy, and concern were important - perhaps most important - of all human psychological needs.  Perhaps this will help you realize that "The Bank - Where Everybody Knows Your Name" is truly possible.  It might not make for good television, but it certainly makes for good business.  The customers you treat this way will stay with you longer, buy more products, and tell others about you. 

 

If you are struggling to find your distinction in the crowded field of financial service competitors, let FSS help you regain the ability to build lasting relationships with your customers.  Come to FSS, where learning names is just one of the many courtesies we can demonstrate, and our phone will be answered by one of our competent and concerned staff; or contact us at info@finsellsys.com for a confidential assessment of your service culture.

 

Time to Fight or Find a Foxhole?

Following up on our column last month called "Purposeful Pain," we continue to explore how industry leaders are shaped in times of difficulty by how they respond to those times.  Since we last wrote on the subject, interest rates have slipped a little further, net interest margins have been squeezed a little tighter, and our own Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke has even uttered the dreaded "R" word.

 

Listen to the news every night and read the daily newspaper headlines.  There is generally a strong degree of weakness within the financial services industry today.  Our experience has taught us that, during times of turbulence, two types of reactions surface.  The first is the foxhole - executives will respond by cutting losses, reducing expenses, and generally "hunkering down" until the bad times have passed.  The second is fighting back.  The executive who fights also appropriately evaluates current actions to see where savings can be appropriately made, but leaves no stone unturned in generating new revenue to replace that which is being lost due to the turbulence.  The astute executive fights back.  The astute executive recognizes that he or she is faced with hundreds to thousands of Moments of Opportunity each day which represent the thirty second to thirty minute interactions their staff have with their customers and prospective customers.  The astute executive recognizes that his or her organization can do a much better job at maximizing these Moments of Opportunity by improving the performance of his or her people.  In so doing, they create new, additional results and outcomes that replace the lost revenue with new revenue.  Their passion to improve performance, despite difficult conditions, leads them to adopt some or all of the following action steps:

1. Improve cross-selling.  Find new methods to secure multiple accounts with new and existing clients.
2. Convert a higher percentage of "shoppers" into clients during their first visit.  By creating a customer-focused experience, institutions can see new sales occur at the first moment of opportunity. 
3. Improve the number and quality of internal and external referrals.  There is nothing better than a warm lead!  Creating a fun environment, conducive to referrals, is critical.
4. Increase the share of wallet with small business customers, their owners, and employees.  This often generates significant growth in low cost deposits.  Remember only 25% of small businesses borrow money but 100% deposit money somewhere.
5. Implement an effective and productive outside sales calling effort.  This strategy centers on high-value / high-potential customers.
6. Create a motivating sales incentive program for the entire team, one that emphasizes the generation of new business from personal "spheres of influence" (the 25-250 people they know best and who trust their recommendations).

There are countless more initiatives for those who want to fight to secure new ground and new revenues while weakness abounds.  Whether you have the strength to fight or need the refuge of a foxhole, strategy is an important element in your decision.  FSS can be your partner in finding and creating new sources of revenue.  Please call us at 800-332-0937 for a consultation on current market opportunities.

 

Mini-Moo

 

"I'll take care of it."  Aren't they words you, as a client, want to hear when trying to resolve an issue?  Recently, a large credit card company posted not just one, but two, of our payments to the incorrect account.  My frustration in getting help began with making my way through the jungle of phone options, none of which was the one I wanted: talk with a human - better yet, talk with a human customer service representative who is properly trained and properly empowered to utter those cherished five words - "I'll take care of it."

 

Of the six calls I completed, three customer service representatives said they couldn't do anything about their company's mistake; one took care of the first mis-posting; and one said she'd have to check with her supervisor but didn't take a phone number to return my call and, to no one's surprise, never checked back with us.  Meanwhile, our account was frozen due to no fault of ours. Only with the sixth person I reached did I find someone who cared. 

 

Frank, exhibiting what we at FSS call the 3 Cs, took interest in our dilemma and showed that he was concerned about our predicament.  He was persistent in figuring out how to resolve the issue, researching what needed to be done, asking appropriate questions to discover our problem, and being so genuine in his approach to me that he encouraged me to consider other options as well, one of which worked!  He made sure he had our phone number just in case we were disconnected.  He called back to advise me of progress in the resolution.  After several days, he called again to make sure all was working as we hoped.  Like the other CSRs I had spoken with, Frank himself couldn't take off the hold, but unlike the other CSRs, he cared about helping us.  In truth, he saved our accounts for his employer. 

 

What kind of service does your institution deliver when presented with your most recent M.O.O.?  Perhaps a client wanting, needing, looking for someone who can and will say, "I'll take care of it"?  How did your employee perform?

 

Partner Focus

 

Starting this month, we are going to begin to introduce the strategic partners of Financial Selling Systems and highlight their core competencies.  We start with NSS Corp. of Bedford, New Hampshire. 

 

NSS Corp. provides strategic products and services focused on sales performance improvement to the community financial market.  Its sales performance measurement solution, NSS XSELLerator, automates enterprise wide sales and referral tracking and incentive calculations.

 

For over 15 years, XSELLerator has helped community banks and credit unions increase sales and achieve performance goals by providing reliable and timely performance reports and referral management solutions.

 

If your financial institution is looking to:

• Track and Report Sales Performance - Scorecards
• Measure Sales, Cross-sales, and Referrals
• Automate Referral Routing
• Automate Referrals Matching to Sales
• Automate Incentive Calculations
• Modify Individual and Organizational Behavior

Please contact us at info@finsellsys.com for an introduction to NSS and XSELLerator.

 

FSS Calendar

 

FSS Chairman and Founder, M. Marshall Weems, was a keynote speaker at the Southern Financial Exchange's 18th Annual Conference & Expo which took place April 21st - 23rd, 2008 in Tunica, MS.  His topic was Technology Solutions for Improving Sales and Service Results: Avoiding Failure / Maximizing Performance by Creating Employee Acceptance.  For a copy of his presentation, contact us at info@finsellsys.com.

   

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Just a reminder...

 

Check out your IRS Form 1040.  It contains information on over 120 potential financial products that your financial institution could be providing to your clients.  List all the cross-sell opportunities hidden there and submit your "I Spy" cross-sell observations to info@finsellsys.com.  The winner will receive a $100 American Express gift card.

 

This contest closes May 5, 2008.  How many opportunities have you found so far?

 

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Financial Selling Systems, Inc.
FSS is a sales / service performance improvement firm.  Our clients find improvement in results and revenues as a result of successfully implementing our strategies.  Contact us to share your biggest challenges and see how FSS can help you overcome them.