Building an effective marketing strategy..

I am surprised at the lack of organizations with good marketing strategy. Doesn’t matter if they are  large MNC’s with millions of dollars of marketing budget or a start-up with minimal budget. I am sure that everyone in the marketing world understands the importance of having a solid strategy! Most marketing efforts fail in the face of unclear strategies. Good strategy can not only improve the effectiveness of your efforts but will help in reducing the total cost. But most importantly, it will help your customers to buy more from your sales teams. With the emergence of new media, more […]

Customer centricity & Chief Customer Officers

In the recent times, we have started to see a lot of organizations pay a lot more attention to their customers and have inducted Chief Customer Officers into their C-Suite. The rationale being that organizations need to be much more customer centric and need to understand their customers better and having someone responsible for this will go a long way in creating the necessary f0cus within the organization to achieve great customer service. However, in my opinion, having a Chief Customer Officer in place does more harm than good! Listening to customer’s and acting on it becomes someone else’s responsibility […]

Step by step guide for success with social media

In the past week, I have now met three people who head marketing functions for their organizations and all three have complained about how their foray into social media has received such a lukewarm response. They all indicated that they are not sure if this is something they should continue to support or just let it die their natural death. They were not the only one’s who were finding it difficult to sustain the initial rush of getting on to social media. So, clearly there is a need for a detailed framework or a step-by-step guide which organizations can use […]

There’s always an opportunity to delight your customers

My wife uses a CDMA mobile connection by Reliance Communications. We have been a loyal customers since 2006. The operator has been advertising about their unlimited network coverage and position it as one of their USP’s to attract new customers. Their ad featuring bollywood actors Anushka Sharma & Rannvijay Singh showcasing their network coverage is below. Now, this is  a good thing to do if you are able to live up to the expectations you create. The trouble is that since yesterday, my wife has not been able to make or receive any calls on her mobile phone. Today, when […]

How personal is your personalized customer service?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj73s4dqoUk

This is a hilarious video about visa’s personalized customer service.

My experience with the banks with whom I have a card account is eerily similar to the customer’s experience in the video.

1. I am always forced to listen to my balances whether or not I want to know about them.
2. I am always informed that the call maybe recorded for quality purposes. I dont know if it was or if it was not.
3. Even after having entered all the validation, I am again required to validate myself.
4. I am asked to be put on hold almost everytime I call, irrespective of the query.
5. There are times when all I want to do is to talk to a representative and be done with. Instead, I am forced to wait and wade through a lot of options (at times with no clear instructions on how to reach an operator).
6. When I do opt to talk to an operator, the wait time is so loong.

A simple solution to this problem could be to provide the following options:

1. Know your balances
2. Know your transactions
3. Talk to a customer service representative

There is a choice that the banks need to make regarding what is more important to them:

1. Is it satisfied & happy customers or
2. Decrease in the cost of managing the customer engagements.

There could be another alternative for the banks which could be a win-win arrangement for both the bank and their customers.

“Customers can talk to their service representatives once a week for free. In case, they do more than that, the bank can charge a small fee to provide the service”

Before making claims of personalized customer service, organizations should first ensure that their service truly is personalized. If not, it is better not to claim this as customers do understand the meaning of personalized and will not be pleased if the service is not truly personalized.

Hope the banks and other financial institutions are paying heed to this advice and change the way they connect to their customers.