This famous painting, by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky, has often been used to illustrate the angst people feel when they are forced to deal with a society incapable of reason (sort of like the way a bank feels when dealing with the Treasury Department.)

Unfortunately, banks have put their customers through this wringer on more than one occasion. The customer experience ought to be one of the best things that happened during the entire week. Too often it degenerates into something far worse.

To improve the customer experience, we suggest you become fanatical about how your customers are treated.

If you’re distracted and not making your customer experience a top priority, bad things can happen to you—fast. Here’s an example of a real horror story, where the policy “tail” was permitted to wag the dog. http://consumerist.com/2009/09/bank-of-america-asks-armless-man-for-thumbprint.html

Sorry to pick on B of A, but the bank has made national news for this kind of gaffe more than once in the past few years—sort of the “gang who can’t shoot straight” kind of thing. So, ask yourself, “Do my employees put customers though this same series of hoops?” A better question, “Do I get angry thinking that this could happen to my customer?” The best question, “Do I even know when this happens to my customer?”

Maybe your bank doesn’t aggravate customers to that extent, but just how good is the customer experience at your bank? Is your bank perceived as unreasonable? Of course you must have policies and procedures. But you should also have employees should be trained to know when to get help with exceptions.  Don’t ever forget that customer perception is what defines their reality. It is the customers’ reality that keeps your lights on.

Being obsessive about a high quality customer experience is just another way of acknowledging that improving customer service is the most important thing you can do for your bank.

Are you a zealot? Are you unwilling to settle for “good enough?” Then you’re building strong customer loyalty.

Be on the lookout for the next post or view the whole series on our website:
Why Fanaticism is a Good Thing.

Filed under: Bank Marketing & Advertising by Apple Advertising
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It’s surprising how much you can learn when you ask questions and listen to the answers. Customers and employees know a lot about what’s happening in your bank: the good, the bad and the “you-know-what”. Here are some inexpensive ways to feed your mind-reading habit.

Lunch with the Suits. Invite some customers, particularly those in the 25-45 age group to come have lunch with senior management. Give them a little presentation about your bank and what your goals are – maybe 3 minutes, certainly no longer than five. Then ask them some questions about how they rank you with the competition. Ask them where you’ve been smart and where you were not so smart. Listen. Take notes.

This same idea works with employees. Every month, bring the suits and sit down with 8 – 10 employees and tell them about the bank and where you are going. Then ask them: are you happy here? What would be better for you? What do our customers know that they aren’t telling us?

Internet Surveys. Technology has made it easy and inexpensive to survey customers (and segments of customers) and employees. These technological tools can be up and running in a few days.

Management by Walking Around. You can learn a lot just by showing up. So, drop in, personally, on some of your best commercial customers (and bank employees) and see for yourself how things get done. (Yes, of course, an appointment might be good. But, you can always ask for one when you get there.) Look for ways you can make things better. Be prepared to listen well. Take notes.

Now that you’ve been immersing yourself in the mind of your market and employees, it’s time to become a fanatic about the customer experience. And, here is where it gets harder for a bank to execute.

Be on the lookout for the next post or view the whole series on our website:
The customer experience at your bank: get the real picture

Filed under: Bank Marketing & Advertising by Apple Advertising
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Every banker is hearing the importance of capital to survival. There’s no doubt that’s true. Here’s something else that is also true: smart, savvy marketing is just as precious as capital because you don’t get capital without it. One improves the other. Strong survivor banks will have plenty of both.

If you want to get personal about it, marketing is a much less demanding source of capital than investors.

Smart marketing makes for loyal customers. Loyal customers will stay with you when things get tough. Loyal customers make for strong banks. Nobody disputes this. But, in the crush of running the bank, the marketing part can get pushed aside. After all, the examiners don’t have an exam for marketing. (They look at advertising—that’s an entirely different and less important matter.)

Becoming a Smart Marketer means becoming a Mind Reader

Do your own “market” research. You won’t get very far unless you are able to get inside the head of your customers, prospects and, don’t forget, your employees. You have some choices about this. Fortunately, there are simple ways to immerse yourself in your market’s mind. The internet has made this easy. If you have plenty of customers in your bank who are between 25 and 45, then the list below will work for you. (Different bank customer demographics might alter the list somewhat.)

How to divine the mind of your market: go here 40 minutes a day, two days a week:

Since it is your intuition that is often the final arbiter at the bank, it should be well informed. Fortunately, the web makes it easy to stay in touch with your market. For example, if your bank has a large segment of 25 – 45 adults, the links below will help you stay close.  (If your market is older, say 45 and up, then you’ll need another list—and aarp.org will be a good place to start.)

• Wired.com
• New York Times
• LA Times Personal Finance section
• LA Times Technology blogs
• Entertainment Tonight Online
• Huffington Post

Next, you need to understand your competition, particularly the way they interact with customers online — including internet bill pay. You should open accounts with each of the banks on your list of competitors and use them. Compare them with your own set up.

• Wells Fargo 
• Bank of America
• TD Bank
• First Bank, Troy
• BB&T
• ING Direct
• USAA( If you’re ex-military)

This close monitoring of the above entities and their web activities may seem like an unnecessary intrusion on your schedule. But, nothing is further from the truth. It is something you should do yourself. You could delegate it, but you shouldn’t.

Be on the lookout for the next post or view the whole series on our website:
Next step in Mind Reading: design customer and employee “feedback systems”

Filed under: Bank Marketing & Advertising by Apple Advertising
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Everybody knows that electronic communication is faster, less expensive and reaches a greater number of people. So, of course, electronic communication is better than paper-based mail, right? Um, well, maybe not.
Infographic source: royal.pingdom.com	According to a study by branding agency Millward Brown paper communication may have some significant advantages. They used MRI brain scans to see how the brain processed paper-based ads vs. digital based ads. As it turned out, paper communication caused more emotional processing and left a deeper footprint in the brain. So using, for example, traditional direct mail can create a more “real” experience for the customer. Of course, paper ads do not have video, audio or interactivity, but then, those enhancements may not be necessary for every message.
There is also some the matter of how much email actually hits the Inbox and does it get read? Seems there are over 39.6 billion emails sent out per day in the United States alone. With the US Census showing a population of over 310 million, that is over 125 emails per person per day for every man, woman and child in the country. (Actually it seems like I get 18 million of those emails everyday.) With such staggering email volume, it’s hard to believe all email is getting read – and that’s what spam filters do anyway, right? Protect us from that incessant barrage of email. How many emails die a slow, agonizing (but thoroughly deserved) death in the collective Junk Mailboxes of the world? So what is the best way to get your message out? Paper or electronic? There is no one “best” answer to this question. You should review your company, your message, your customers (and potential customers) and make the most balanced decision you can. For sure, there are no automatic answers.

Filed under: Advertising, Business At Its Best, Communication, Marketing, Public Relations, Small Business Services by kshuford
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“If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted they’d have said a faster horse.” – Henry Ford

Just a thought inspired by Henry Ford, but maybe your customers don’t have a good a grasp on what they need as you do. So go after it, Hank.

Filed under: Business At Its Best, Creativity by Zack Self
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Apple Advertising got its start as a bank advertising firm back in 1971, mentored by the late Jack Westall, President of Asheville Savings and Loan Association.  Our roots are deep in the banking industry. We have lived through a lot of industry turmoil and progress, stagnation and growth in those intervening 39 years.

One of the banking industry’s more active associations, the NC Bankers Association (NCBA) conducts the country’s oldest state association banking school. Held every August in Chapel Hill, the school is a four-year course of instruction, grooming ‘up-and-comers’ to take their place in the economy’s most vital industry, the banking sector. North Carolina is a solid financial center due largely to the first-class education many of its bankers have received at NC Bankers’ School of Banking.

Apple Advertising has always been a strong supporter of the banking industry in general and the NC Bankers in particular. This year we continued to put our money where our mouth is and enrolled Zack Self in the school as a freshman to attend the week course during August 8-13, 2010. We’re happy to report that he applied himself, studied hard and passed the final exam.  That means he can return to Chapel Hill next August as a sophomore.

Congratulations to Zack and the 180 or more students and graduates of the 2010 NC School of Banking. We wish all of you the very best.

The banking industry needs all the bright minds it can get.

Filed under: Bank Marketing & Advertising, Bank Operations & Compliance by George Self
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Good marketing strategies, tried and true, are hard to pin down these days, perhaps because they are hard to articulate in few words or because of the bewildering new media and shifting market base.

However, there’s help, from the excellent book Kellogg on Marketing. In the book you’ll find ten elements of a good marketing strategy.  These elements are receiving a lot of attention by smart people in business.  We’re including them in our client’s marketing plans – and we think you should including them in your plans, as well.  (Here’s the best part: they are easy to understand and measure.)

The table below came from research notes we did for a client back in 2002-3. It proved helpful in focusing the content of boardroom presentations and in preparing various communications.  The attributes are still in play and performing well. We hope this list (and the book) will be helpful to you, too, as you seek to innovate in today’s new market.

Look to see which ones your company has employed is or is working to employ. Which ones have you found to be most effective? Which ones haven’t you pursued that merit attention?  Email me at zself@appleadv.com to let me know what you think.

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Filed under: Bank Marketing & Advertising, Business At Its Best, Marketing, Small Business Services by Zack Self
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I came across a good reminder to think about challenges differently to accomplish a goal. Thirty-three years ago Paul MacCready approached a challenge creatively and won. He devised a technological solution to win the Kremer Prize for human powered flight with his innovative Gossamer Condor. All the other teams designed traditional aircraft that were too heavy. Mr. MacCready thought that the prize could be reached by flying slowly. This creative idea lead to a series of innovations with light-weight aircraft. He and his company went on to greater accomplishments and recognition. The innovative Gossamer Condor is now prominently featured at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

It is good to remember that creativity is critical to the success of your personal and business endeavors. Make sure that you and yours are within an environment that fosters creative thinking and rewards the process of innovation. This is harder to attain than it should be and may require drastic action. But if the game is worth the candle, then any action that will produce creative innovation is certainly worthwhile.

The Gossamer Condor story is worth your time to read. There have long been victors who were creative enough to approach challenges differently, who achieved distinction with innovative attempts to reach their goal.

I trust that such an approach continues to inspire you and produce great accomplishment for you and yours as it has for us. Our firm has enjoyed the great honor and privilege of helping people and their companies thrive with innovative applications of creative thinking since 1971.

[Thanks to Wikipedia and Wired.com for the inspiration.]

Filed under: Business At Its Best, Creativity, Technology by Zack Self
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Here’s a simple and efficient way to evaluate yourself and your employees. Clients, too, for that matter. Where do you think you and your closest friends would “plot” on the graphic below? Where would you plot your best employee? The worst?

Pretty neat. Like all brilliantly simple concepts, it is clear and useful. And it’s teachable. Yes, it is intuitive. What I like most is that it puts intuition to paper. It also helps to add volume to that little voice inside your head that is sometimes unfortunately ignored.

I learned about this technique from the very bright Melissa Murray, Chief Inspiration Officer of Mosaix Group and currently in Asheville, NC. Like most of us Melissa detests having to deal with dumb issues related to people management, but unlike most people she figured out how to deal with the problem.

This new “tool” allowed her to make good assessments quickly so she could get on with her real work. She developed it while traveling the world producing events for large corporations back in a former life. She found that time and distance amplified strengths (and defects) in the people working on the account with her.

The technique is founded on the principle that a person’s ability to perform in a progressive organization can be isolated into two discrete camps: (1) their knowledge and (2) their motivation. And, it is a way to evaluate the degrees of each component. One person can have more knowledge, or greater motivation, than another can.

Recently, I asked her to lunch to refresh me on how this system worked. The diagram above is a slightly modified version of what she drew.

Here’s how it works

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Filed under: Business At Its Best, Keep It Simple by Zack Self
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“What” you are is one thing. “Who” you are is a whole ‘nother thing.

What you are is functional, it can be bought. But who you are, now there’s something that can’t quite be quantified and priced.   It is that which makes you unique, different. It is that which sets you apart from the competition.  It is, to borrow a phrase, ‘priceless’ because it gives your customers a reason to be loyal to you, even in today’s commodity-driven market.

What people mean to each other is what makes a romance last.
What a business means to its customers is what makes it thrive.

There has been a lot of talk lately of the deterioration of brand value.  The numbers don’t lie, consumers are now moving in unprecedented numbers to ‘generic’ products and services that cost less than ‘premium’ brands.   But, what happens when two similar products are similarly priced?  In that case, the difference is distinguished only by personality. So,… (more…)

Filed under: Advertising, Business At Its Best, Marketing by Zack Self
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