Customer Engagement in Financial Services – a matter of culture and trust

Delegates at the latest Customer Engagement Club Directors Forum on the future for customer engagement in the troubled and much-maligned financial services industry saw culture and trust emerge as two crucial and closely related challenges going forward

The Financial Services sector is under pressure to get its customer offering back on track. That pressure comes from consumers who have lost trust in service providers for a host of reasons, and from regulatory bodies such as the Financial Services Authority (FSA) who are introducing a roster of changes that impact the relationship between providers and those who use their products and services.

The opening keynote address was delivered by Nadege Genetay, head of the redress unit of the FSA, who took the financial services sector to task over the way it deals with customers – not surprising against a backdrop of 1.76million customer complaints in the first six months of this year, an eye watering rate of more than 10,000 complaints every single day.

Nadege pinpointed what she described as an unhealthy attitude towards customers among many financial services organisations and said the sector needs to clean up its act and adopt a more customer-centric attitude.

Her comments were echoed by Peter Flade, senior partner at Forum host Gallup Consulting, who pointed out that if the culture within an organisation is not geared towards its customers then there is no real chance of that organisation winning the trust from customers it needs to maximise success.

For this to happen then confidence, integrity, pride and passion all need to be in place along with a leadership that has compassion and offers stability – two things that have been in short supply in financial services.

Before the lively panel debate on The Future of Customer Engagement in Financial Services there were contributions from Paul Scott, director of strategic partnerships at Merchants who looked at key trends from the Dimension Data Global Contact Centre Benchmarking report; Conrad Simpson director at Interactive Intelligence who used case study examples to show how technology can boost customer engagement in the sector; and Andy Scott, head of customer experience banking and financial services at Firstsource who showed how well handled complaints can turn crisis into opportunity.

One bank that seems to be getting its customer engagement offering right is Metro Bank, the first UK High Street Bank to open its doors in close on 150 years. Paul Marriott-Clarke, managing director of retail services at Metro Bank explained the customer centric ethos of a bank that is forcing competitors to look over their shoulders. Metro Bank wants to create fans, not customers, and nine in ten of its new customers are from referrals.

Following on from Metro Bank was Aviva where Rod Butcher head of customer service and insight talked about the group’s ongoing journey to customer-centricity including the use of the increasingly ubiquitous Net Promoter Score. Rod’s was a joint presentation with Deborah Eastman global had of business consulting at Satmetrix, one of the organisations behind NPS.

Last but by no means least came Andrew Fisher, CEO of Towry, who focused on the cultural change he has masterminded at the wealth company over the past six years,  a change that has resulted in an increased level of trust – and of course performance - among both employees and customers.

Organisational culture and customer trust – get the first right and the second will follow.