10 August 2010

The Gap

Following on from my theme of getting the user experience right, let’s consider how much money organisations invest in telling us what experience we can expect, only to deliver something completely different. Let’s take a point in case.
In my humble opinion NatWest has a great brand, despite, like most retail banks, having a poor NPS. Apart from the fact I’ve always liked their use of colour, it is a visible organisation I can interact with across multiple channels – strong branch network, good online and telephone banking provision and I think the first UK retail bank to launch an iPhone app.

Recent ads in print and broadcast have featured their mortgage advisors. Apparently the advisor will ask your child all about their new bedroom and fane interest better than most parents can. Actually, this wouldn’t impress me much as a parent if it was a reality; after all they haven’t actually given you a mortgage yet, so it would be a bit premature to be letting little Johnny or Katie choose wall paper.

That aside, the point is they are all chummy when you go in to make the application. I haven’t been able to test this as NatWest couldn’t see me in a branch on a Saturday for 4 weeks, so we had to do the application on the phone. That’s fine, it worked well and the guy that took my details was excellent. He did everything he could to make it easy for me, so far so good, experience kind of matches the promise.

Post application, when the additional information requests start, well that’s a different story. Clearly nobody showed mystical underwriters the ad. Now we are into the cycle of an IVR system, a front office telephone operator with little mortgage technical ability and zero visibility of what is happening in the back office other than to say “that’s a 5 day lead time, so it will be 5 days.” They have no ability to contact the part of the workflow doing their thing to qualify that lead time. You’re telling me the customer facing operators are the only person in the business with a phone?

I have dealt with more customer centric local authorities than this, granted not many. This is a case study in how to waste money on branding, how to set customer expectations higher than you can fulfil and how to drive negative sentiment about your business.

I think NPS has a real value to a business. It’s not the only metric, but for NatWest it’s crucial. Friends, family colleagues all know I’m in the process of moving. All ask how it’s going, knowing full well it’s a torrid experience. And guess who gets pointed to as my lightening rod for this frustration, you’ve guessed it NatWest.

Now compare that to Apple.

04 August 2010

The power of data

I was chatting with a colleague the other day about how I didn’t think it was right that the FSA was banning self declaration mortgages. At the end of the day if a lender wants to take the risk and the borrower can pay the premium then what’s the problem?

He wasn’t to bothered to be honest, but what he did get animated about was how regulators swing into action on the back of some Daily Mail ‘something has to be done’ type campaign and over react. (yeah I know what you’re thinking, we’re missing having the world Cup to talk about).

“Look how everyone disses direct mail and that some people want that regulated out of existence” chirped up another colleague and this prompted to get some thoughts down on a case study on the power of data I heard recently.
I well networked man from Gartner was speaking at an event I attended recently and he told me a story that illustrates the power of data, what intelligent marketing people can achieve and why spending more on thinking than doing generates greater results.

A UK credit card firm had around 200k customers with varying spending habits and credit profiles. The company’s direct mail team of 3 people used to send them a direct mail piece, twice a year (before Christmas and before the summer holidays). Using some fancy mathematics, that’s around 400k mail pieces per year.

Then they hired someone that understood the power of DM and put in a bit of CRM kit. He hired a few more people that included the obligatory creatives and campaign managers, but most importantly, people that could use the CRM tools to mine the data and find meaningful patterns and customer segments. Combining spending data, demographic and CRM records they could now create focused propositions and campaigns.

Now they still send around 400k pieces each year, but sometimes the campaigns have as few as the Gartner Guy couldn’t tell me too much detail about results, Could have been about confidentiality or because he simply didn’t know, but revenue per client and retention had grown significantly.

The days of broadcast communication having been dying for over 10 years. I think this has been expedited by the global recession, social media, technology and organisations grasping customer experience. But ultimately it is the clever guys like those at our credit card company that will see it off.