Industry experience

Financial services

“Holly goes lightly” or, how not to inadvertently lose customers

"Oh no, not another article on customer relationship management !” Now be honest, I bet that’s what some of you are thinking – I know I would be!

But before turning this page and consigning me to the “yawn” folder, spend just a few more seconds to ask yourself these 3 questions:

  • Have I got more than one distribution channel available to the same customers, with the choice seeming to be more under the customer’s control than the business’s?
  • Have I got separate call centre, e-commerce and/or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) initiatives underway?
  • Am I struggling to understand when and how to implement customer self service (which, let’s face it, is a whole lot more efficient than tying up one of those valuable call centre agents)?

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of the above, then you might want to invest a little more of your time to read the story that follows. Trust me, I’m a consultant!

This is Holly

Meet Holly, a successful 40 something, complete with career, husband, 2 children, Swedish nanny, large home, expensive car, the lot. She appears to be your dream customer come true – and she runs the family finances. Unfortunately however, some early experiences (Holly is convinced, rightly or wrongly, that she was the first person to have been mis-sold an endowment policy) has led her to believe that all financial services companies are a necessary evil to be kept at arms length as much as possible.

A few years ago Indirect Circle came on to the scene offering a price leading telephone based personal insurance service and Holly was attracted to the idea straight away – low premiums, no more brokers ringing up, no wasting of a Saturday morning filling in forms in somebody’s uncomfortable office. First the car insurance, then the house insurance went Indirect’s way.

Initially Holly liked the way everything could be done by phone from the comfort of her own home. She was less impressed when Indirect Circle’s new phone system introduced the dreaded “IVR”, especially as it seemed to take longer and longer to get to talk to a real person. But she was basically happy with the service she received, and on the occasion she had to make a claim, the process was very smoothly done.

Then two things happened simultaneously – she discovered Indirect Circle had a WEB site and she decided to invest some Tessa proceeds into an ISA. Once on to Indirect’s web site, she was surprised (because Indirect had never mentioned this) to discover that they provided ISAs and applications could be made online. “Great” she thought, and duly started to fill out the form. After 15 minutes she came across a question that she just didn’t understand – something about mini this and maxi that. So, having her mobile to hand she called her usual Indirect number, only to discover that they didn’t process ISA’s there. However there was an email facility on the site so rather than make another call and suffer more “IVR musak”, she duly completed the email pro-forma and sent it off. Now there seemed no way of saving the information she had already filled in, so with a big sigh and dark mutterings of wasted time, she left the site.

A few days later she still hadn’t got a reply to her email. However two envelopes dropped on her mat in the morning’s post. She was a bit perplexed when one of the envelopes turned out to be a marketing flyer from Indirect Circle acknowledging her as a valued customer and inviting her to apply for an ISA under privileged terms. There was a telephone number she could call, but no mention of her email however. So she called the number anyway and eventually got to talk to a real live person, who had no knowledge of any email. She was singularly unimpressed, but at least now understood about mini and maxi ISAs.

Which is why she got interested in the other envelope. WayAhead Direct seemed to be a broker offering insurance and investment (including ISA) products from a number of companies. So when she next turned on her PC, she looked up their web site before trying the ISA application again on Indirect Circle’s site. She was pleasantly surprised – not only could she complete the application on-line, she could also make changes to the ISA once it was setup. She was impressed even more when she discovered she could “talk” to someone at the broker’s office via her PC when she once again got stuck with the application process.

The “talking” began with Holly using the facility to send a message to one of WayAhead’s advisors and getting an immediate response back whilst the application screen was still in front of her. Gilbert was very helpful but she was still unsure on a few things so he asked whether she wanted him to call her. This he duly did (on Holly’s mobile, since her phone line was tied up accessing the Internet). Not only this, but Gilbert somehow managed to take control of her PC and move the mouse to various pieces of information on her screen as he was explaining things over the phone. Thus he was able to guide her through the application process so that the business was completed successfully in the one session, to Holly’s great satisfaction.

A little later she wondered whether WayAhead could also help with the car insurance that was coming up for renewal. So she sent Gilbert an email, not really expecting any response given her previous experiences with Indirect. Almost straight away however she got an acknowledgement that the email had been received, that WayAhead would be happy to assist with her motor requirements and that someone would contact her shortly via her stated preferred media – home telephone! She was delighted when she got a call later that evening from Natalie. Natalie introduced herself as an insurance colleague of Gilbert’s. She knew all about Holly from the ISA application, thanked her for her email and then gave her various options for getting motor insurance, including once again choices in doing the business via the Web or by telephone. As time was short that evening she opted to go via WayAhead’s web site again the following day, confident that she would be able to do what she needed, given that help seemed to be always on hand.

She was less surprised the following day (because her expectations of good service were already being driven ever upwards) when, whilst on WayAhead’s site, she got a message from Gilbert updating her on the ISA application progress and asking her to let him know if she needed any help with the motor quote.

Holly never did get back to Indirect Circle.

The Moral

Different customers like to do business using different media and some will use all the different media available to them. Some media costs a company more to use than others and sales activities are more likely to need “real time” interaction between customer and company to be successful. The technology to support such interactions is available today.

So if your company:

doesn’t provide options for interacting,
doesn’t get the “cost versus real time interaction” balance right, and/or
isn’t able to keep track of all of its customer interactions
it will lose customers. Won’t it?

The above story is fictional, contrived to highlight issues with customer contact management. Any similarities to existing people or companies are unintended and purely coincidental.

Copyright: Kim A Massey, May 2000