Personal touch

More than ever before, customers want their banks to treat them as individuals and to understand their specific needs. As the range of channels through which banks communicate with their customers expands - through mobile banking and social media - the challenge is to engage with customers in a consistent and personalised manner.

Banks have many tools at their disposal to help them reach out to customers with relevant and targeted marketing messages, whether online, in print or face-to-face. Transpromo, which combines transactional print and proactive marketing to put personalised marketing messages on statements and other printed communications, is one tool that is delivering tangible results for organisations in many industries. The intelligent use of social networking sites and consistency across all channels are equally crucial components of a successful customer relationship management strategy.

Some large organisations are making great efforts to exploit opportunities to improve customer communications through transpromo, mobile services and their online presence, but the financial services sector seems to be lagging behind. In surveys about the potential of transpromo, for instance, a large proportion of banks, insurers and credit card companies agree that individualised mail communications are important for customer satisfaction, but relatively few put personalised messages on bills, statements or customer service communications.

"The key to having more personal communications is to understand a customer's life, most of which has nothing to do with banking," says Stessa Cohen, research director in the Banking Industry Advisory group at Gartner.

"The personal touch is essential in product delivery. Understanding how people live their lives and what their needs are helps banks to understand the information their customers need and where they need it. For instance, banks must understand the importance of mobile devices. People use their phones less to talk on than they used to, and they do many other things with them, so personalisation is very important. This is true in any part of life. Nothing is too mundane to personalise."

By way of example of how customers increasingly expect personalisation in every part of their lives, Cohen points
to websites such as BBC Online where content can be easily customised, TiVo services that allow viewers to skip television advertisements, and even to a website where buyers can customise their own chocolate bar. Given the data that banks have about their customers, it is within their reach to use transpromo or social media to achieve similar levels of personalisation.

Why isn't the banking industry leading the way?

Taking transpromo as an example, it is clear that it has become an important tool in many industries for B2C communications. Recent reports have shown that it is also widely used as a B2B marketing tool, with an average of nearly one-third of companies in the UK, France, Germany and the US putting personalised messages on printed communications. Furthermore, transpromo is not the sole preserve of large companies, but is also used by SMEs. Given this proven appeal to companies of all sizes and across many industries, it seems transpromo could be one of many important components that determine the success of any bank's attempts to improve customer relationship management.

"Personalisation is everywhere and banks must understand it more deeply," says Cohen. "They must understand how customers want to be communicated with - whether they prefer email or to be called only at certain times of day, and so on. They must understand the complex lives of their customers. Only now are the largest banks rolling out personalised financial management tools.
"At the same time, banks must also ask themselves what people really want to know, and whether they need personalised messaging or just better service. Credit card companies, for example, collect personal data so they can use it not just for cross-selling, but also to improve their services. It is a question of listening and understanding how customers use banking, so that you know what kinds of messaging they want."

Banks already have much of what they need to achieve this, as they possess detailed data on their customers' banking activity, and the tools to get value from this data are readily available. Using those tools to maximum effect could generate a huge competitive advantage. Transpromo messages, for instance, precisely hit their targets, potentially generating customer loyalty and better cross-selling opportunities by offering appropriate and timely products.

"It is not about getting more data - banks have that already. Use it well and don't abuse it. Ask customers how they want that information to be used. Communicate in a tactful and respectful way. If a customer doesn't want messaging, then respecting that is a part of providing better service," notes Cohen.

Cross-channel consistency

The mix of channels through which banks and their customers communicate with each other is still expanding into new territory, most obviously through online social media. Ensuring that marketing messages are personalised, relevant and consistent across all channels is certainly a big challenge, but the rewards for achieving this could be great.

As well as understanding their customers' needs, the onus is on banks to understand how every channel operates, and use printed, online and mobile communications in a coherent way.

"Social networking sites offer opportunities for banks to do more for individualised communications," Cohen remarks. Twitter and Facebook, for example, can enable very personal discussions, as long as they are not about something that is regulated.
They can move customers to the right, regulated channels. Banks must use the information they have in an educated, informed and compliant way. All communications must be appropriate and personalised, whether on paper, online or on a mobile device. This is
true for business customers, too.

"It is important to remember that there are lots of ways to communicate with people, and paper might be more appropriate for some. It is not just about driving into social media."

The tools to enable better customer communication, whether it is customer data or processes such as transpromo, are there already. Now is the time for banks to put those tools to better use, and accept the change in mindset that might be needed to do so.
"Banks are often driven by products, not by their customers' requirements. They are struggling to change that, particularly for business customers, but they must address it to become more customer-centric. The challenge is not the technology in the back office, although there are some issues there, but how to organise to focus on better service and not just on cross-selling," says Cohen, who points to Amazon as a company that got the balance right.

"Customers don't want to be sold to. Amazon.com cross-sells, but it does it by saying that people who bought a particular product also bought other items. These can be clicked on, but they can also be easily ignored. There needs to be automated tools for mass customisation, which means personalisation for a lot of people, but there are tools for this and some are banking-specific.
"The market is maturing quickly, but what banks need to do is to get involved. At the moment, even their websites are behind. They must test out the water."