At Truebridge, we have done research to identify the barriers to cross selling and published the results. In a nutshell, we identified the need for banks to shape their image as the place to go for more of their customers’ financials needs beyond deposits and loans. We also highlighted the fact that banks needed to do a much better job in creating referrals. There are several ways that these barriers can be overcome. Why aren’t banks attacking these problems with more force?

A recent conversation with the president of a community bank gave me a good understanding of their points of pain and it sets up a real catch 22 for the whole industry. The low interest rate environment has squeezed margins and driven down revenues forcing expense cuts. On top of that, new regulations are adding to the cost of banking. What is needed most now is revenue growth. But growth takes money. Money that is not there to spend.

So how do you grow without money? The answer is leverage. I don’t mean leverage through debt, I mean leverage by using what you have; your brand, your branches, your employees, and your customers.

Leverage your customers – You have already spent quite a bit of time and money to acquire your customer.  Depending on various estimates, that could be anywhere from $350 – $800.  According to industry experts, cross selling to an existing customer only costs 10% of what it would cost to acquire a new one.  Yet, on average, banks’ share of wallet is only two of the ten financial products that their customers own.

Leveraging your brand – A brand represents a considerable investment. If you look at estimates of brand value, they go into the billions of dollars. Most banks don’t think about it much because it is not readily apparent on a balance sheet. Your brand means more than the fact that people know who you are, but also how they feel about you. While the past few years have done some image damage for the banking industry as a whole, most community banks enjoy an image of being trusted and that is a critical element in making any sale.

Leverage your branches – There is much being said today that the branches have become an albatross for banks, an expensive way to gather deposits in today’s increasingly online world. Trying to maintain profitability has led many banks to cut branch operations to the bone. It shows. I can walk into some branches near my Boston office and see one teller and eight empty stations and a line of six people. To get more out of these branches, start thinking about the advantage they could provide. A place for more face to face sales.

Leverage your employees – Most frontline employees are very good at customer service. They are friendly and they genuinely like to help people. Many banks have assumed that more leverage from an employee means trying to change them into sales people. An expensive proposition with mixed results at best. Getting more referrals from the branch employees can be done quite effectively by building a customer service process that helps uncover needs and start dialogues.

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According to the recent 2012 Bank and Credit Union Financial Marketing Survey developed by Jim Marous of Bank Marketing Strategy and Jeffry Pilcher of The Financial Brand, cross selling is at the top of the list of marketing priorities. With fee revenue under pressure from new federal regulation, it is not surprising that generating more revenue per customer is so important. This is nothing new. Looking at this year’s Grant Thornton LLP’s 18th Annual Bank Executive Survey, along with previous years’ surveys, you will see that organic growth (cross selling) has been a top priority for quite some time.

It stands to reason. One bank that seems to be a leader in cross selling is Wells Fargo. Their former CEO, Dick Kovacevich has said that cross selling to an existing customer only costs them 10% of what it would cost to acquire a new one. Well, we all know that selling a couple of more products is not that easy. Industry share of wallet continues to hover around two of the average ten financial products that people own.

What is Standing in the Way?

It is not for lack of product to sell or people to sell it. It is estimated that many financial institutions have over a hundred products on the shelf. At Truebridge, we conducted research to to provide some insight into the cross sell problem. Three hundred and seventy five individuals from over 120 financial institutions across the US participated in our Truebridge Survey. We found that two of the biggest barriers to cross selling were that people viewed their financial institution narrowly as the place to go for transactional products, but not much more. Another problem was the inability of the frontline employees to make referrals.

Using Education to Sell – A New Approach to Marketing

The answer is a new approach to marketing; an approach that goes beyond today’s continual string of product messages. Sales expert Chet Holmes in his book “The Ultimate Sales Machine” sums it up well. He says that at any one time only about 3% of people are in the market for a particular product. On the other hand 100% of people may be interested in learning more about a particular topic that is important to them. Let’s think about how this would work. Suppose a financial institution runs an ad for a home equity loan. By Holmes’ estimate only 3% of the target is actually looking for a home equity loan while 97% are not interested. On the other hand if they ran an ad that offered free information about how to take advantage of today’s low rates to eliminate high cost debt, you may find that message strikes a chord with 100% of the target audience.

This is called education based marketing. It enables financial institutions to start dialogues based on what is on people’s mind not just what they have to sell.

Featured White Paper: “The Power of Education Based Marketing”

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In a recent article from the Financial Brand, Datamining Social Media Profiles for Actionable Results, the first paragraph talks about the biggest challenge to cross selling. ”If a financial institution could know that one of its customers just got married…Or had a baby…Or got divorced…Wouldn’t those life events create selling opportunities for that financial institution? If a bank or credit union understood its customers’ life situations, wouldn’t they be able to market specific products and services centered around people’s unique needs? If only there was a way to figure out what was going on in people’s lives…”

As the title of the article indicates, it went on talking about data mining as a way to see these customer needs.

No, indeed, people do not walk around with a sign on their back listing their current financial needs. As a matter of fact, many people are not even aware of many of the financial needs they face. Others just choose to ignore them.

But finding out what these needs are can be easier than you think, even as fewer people walk into branches today.
All it takes is an understanding of two key facts. First, most people out there today are confused and desperately looking for helpful information and guidance from someone they trust. This includes the millions of baby boomers that just want to be told what to do when it comes time to retire. The second fact is that these people will do business with the one who is there to provide that information just at the time it is needed.

Any financial institution that becomes a resource for this kind of help will be in place to take care of a wider range of their customers’ needs. How the information is presented is the key to making a request into a sale. The information and guidance need to be provided as a value added service, not some repackaged sales material. The marketing of this service should be done by communicating the benefits of what the information can do for customers such as saving money or avoiding mistakes. When a customer makes a request, they are raising their hand asking for help. Not a better time to connect them with someone in the financial institution that can help. The costs involved can be quite low as a financial institution can leverage their existing points of customer contact to deliver their story. This includes, the branches, the website and more and more through social media.

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Essentially, “Social Media” is really just a buzz word that has come to be used to describe the ever changing landscape of the internet that we’ve all grown to know so well. The phrase simply refers to all the social networks in existence and the way we, web users, customers, and brands interact with each other online today. Not only can a single social network be used as a marketing tool in itself, but integrating social media channels into your website gives you the power to leverage your website in ways that didn’t exist years ago. The difference between traditional websites and the ones within social media communities is the simple notion that traditional websites speak to a single customer at a time, where as social media sites allow everyone to have a voice. In this sense, social media is the catalyst that makes our everyday web experience so much more dynamic and it has opened the doors for individuals and brands to create their own unique online presence.

In a recent Bank Systems & Technology article, Social Business: 4 Ways Social Media Is Transforming Banking, this widespread use of social media platforms and collaboration tools has been referred to as “social business” but no matter what you call the transformation, it‘s something that needs to be on the radar of all people within the banking industry. As the article describes “The banking industry has begun to sit up and take notice as banks’ clients (including the baby boomers who have the majority of assets in banks) use social tools to navigate family events, opinions and plans — all part of the customer relationship that banks want to build.”

The increasing use of mobile devices is one of the factors that has accelerated this transformation and banks need to be willing to provide more solutions to leverage the latest technology innovations and harness the power of social networking communities. As the article also points out, “customers want more than simple mobile banking” and the banks that are already finding ways to meet these demands are the ones that are already one step ahead.

According to the latest Nielson Study on the state of social media, mobile device internet users that use their phone to view content and websites increased 47% in the US compared with last year’s findings. Even more staggering was the increase in mobile users that were using social networking sites which showed an increase of 62% during the same time period. This number is sure to continue rising as more sites offer content that’s optimized for mobile devices and websites become more deeply integrated with social networks. These are facts that banks can’t overlook because we’re entering an age where failing to adapt to technology innovations can leave a bank leaps behind their competition.

While social media may still be hard for some banks to embrace, the “wait and see approach” is only hurting banks when it comes to leveraging social media channels. The longer it takes, the harder it will be to implement and try to catch up with their competitors. After all, social media is about building relationships with your customers and driving social interactions which isn’t something that happens overnight. In order to create real business, it’s important to understand how to successfully engage with these communities and devise a mutli-channel strategy that works within your institution.

As the popularity of online communities and social media sites grows, the need to connect with customers and prospects in the most efficient and effective manner possible is imperative. Currently many of the largest banks in the U.S. are already leveraging many of the primary social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, however their strategies usually involve non-financial initiatives such as sweepstakes, charitable events, etc. This isn’t to say that non-financial initiatives are a bad way of increasing engagement; they simply need to be accompanied by a variety of other types of content sharing that help build your bank’s brand image and show loyalty to their customers.

As a provider of financial products in an age where content is king and social networks have become the main channel for information and content delivery, it’s important that their customers are able to find the answers to all the financial questions they might have, no matter what stage of their lives. An informed and educated customer is more likely to do business with you, so it’s important that you can provide them with the educational content to help them make the right financial decisions. Given the added value of real-time feedback, transparency and sharing that social media provides, the opportunity exists for an entirely new marketing approach. Banks need to shift their focus away from traditional marketing and start defining their marketing strategy for the future.

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What does customer service mean to you? Personally when I think of customer service, I can’t help but have my thoughts be overshadowed by frustrating experiences, automated call services and plenty of dead ends. If you provide any product or service, no matter what it may be, you have to be 100% dedicated to assist your customers when something goes wrong. You can’t simply provide a service and then turn a cold shoulder on your customers when something goes wrong. Customer service is a HUGE factor in how your brand is viewed and when your customers need help with your products or services, they should be able to count on you to provide them the information that will help them, which in turn will increase their loyalty to you in the long run. You may be reading this now and thinking that the connotations attached to a brand’s customer service is something that is hard to change. However, I was recently involved in a scenario with a certain internet service provider that left me utterly amazed.

No matter who you’ve used in the past for your internet service provider (ISP), I’d be willing to bet that you can probably recall countless times when you were unhappy with the level of commitment or customer service from these companies. However, one single series of events recently occurred that changed my whole perspective on how you can restore trust and make your customers happy by simply providing them what they want…or at least the information that can help.

In my case, the company I was dealing with was Comcast, whom I might add I’ve never been a huge fan of due to their countless mishaps I’ve dealt with as a Comcast residential customer. I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t a shock when I found the simple act of finding out what should be a simple answer (is service available at our current business address), turned into a maze of calls and lack of call backs. All I wanted to know was if our company could get service, and if not when it would “tentatively” be available. Shouldn’t be so hard to obtain, right?

I knew I would get my answer eventually by calling persistently, but surprisingly a single “tweet” into the twittersphere about how frustrating the process was, resulted in a level of customer service I couldn’t even fathom. Less than 2 minutes after I sent my message out on twitter, @ComcastBill responded via twitter with an email address for me to send my concerns to. I also received a follow-up from Bill a few minutes later informing me that they are working on improving response time even more in the future.

At the time, I just thought my frustrations would be filtered on to someone who would “look into” the issue more. But not this time, within the next 3 hours I received calls from 5 Comcast executives…ranging from corporate level to technicians. Not only did they listen and respond diligently to my concerns but they also personally came to our company and met with me the following Monday. They informed that service would be available within the month and the upgrade would actually end up saving our company money…all from one single 140 char message I sent out on twitter.

Rather than elaborating more on the circumstances of this scenario, think how this level of customer service could be applied to your financial institution. Many banks and credit unions have begun to embrace the emergence into the social media realm and many are doing so quite well while others are still hesitant to engage. Using social media for promotions and the latest news about new products and rates is definitely a great start, but how can social media platforms help your bank improve customer service, retain more customer and  provide your customers with the information they need, when they need it? A recent article from Forbes about how banks are lagging when it comes to social media, stated that “At the very least you should be paying attention, and at some point you need to figure out how to respond.”

I simply wanted to know if our company was eligible for Comcast’s internet service and within just a couple of business days, I had gained commendable respect from their efforts, learned everything I wasn’t able to know in the months prior, and as a result, I’m actually switching to Comcast as our internet provider because of the simple fact that they were able to provide this information and customer service. Had it not been for @ComcastBill, Comcast could have very well lost out on a business customer that was willing to pay for their services. This is a perfect example of how problems can help build your brand.

As we’ve talked about time and time again, customers will come to you when you give them the answers they need and not only that, they will continue to see you as a resource for financial information if you can readily provide it to them. If you are there for them to give them the advice they need to make important financial decisions, this will be something that they’ll continue to remember. You might even be able to steer them directly to the individual at your institution who can follow-up with them right away. In the Forbes article, Jim Cramer was quoted saying “Financial Advisors who use social media for business make more money, have more clients and have larger books of business.”

Customer service is just one of the many facets that embody individual companies and institutions, but it is not one that should be taken lightly. As a financial institution, striving for the highest customer satisfaction is probably already a major priority, but think of the ways that you can enhance you existing practices using social media. Think of how you can engage more with your customers, think of the avenues that social networking can lend to your practices and please share any success stories that you may already have from adding social media as a marketing expansion.

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Mary Beth Sullivan from Capital Performance Group, in her recent blog article The Future of Branches: Reinvention in the Banking Strategies section of the BAI website proposed an interesting solution to retail branch profitability. It’s called sales. She referenced a huge market that banks can own by leveraging their branch network. This market is people who are looking for advice. Martha Stewart realized this a long time ago and built a business around it. People want to be told what to do. It holds true in personal finances as well. People are looking for simple and easy to understand information and guidance from someone they trust. And they will do business with the one who is there to provide it. This includes the enormous baby boom generation that has been turned upside down by the Great Recession. They want to be told what to do as they face retirement – without the confusing jargon.

Most banks have the people and products in place to provide their customers with a wide range of financial solutions. In spite of that, their share of wallet remains a low two out of ten. Bank executives have put organic growth through cross selling as a number one goal for years.

So, what is standing in the way and how do banks get over it? To be successful, banks must overcome a couple of hurdles. Today, bank branches are seen narrowly as a place to go for transactions. Banks need to broaden that image as the place to go for personal advice on financial issues that people face at all stages of life. And banks need to get better at having front line employees start dialogues and set up sales appointments. Most of these frontline employees are working at a bank because they are service oriented.

The way over both of these barriers is to provide educational content. But the key to using educational content to drive sales is how it is delivered. It cannot just sit idle on a bank’s website. Delivered properly, the bank becomes a resource, drawing people hungry for answers. And frontline employees use it as a way of starting dialogues and setting up sales appointments in a comfortable service oriented manner. An added benefit to this approach is that loyalty skyrockets. The bank provides a valuable service and the customer not only stays, but buys.

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A good reputation is undoubtedly important to any financial institution. It translates into more new and more loyal customers. A recent article in American Banker, discussed the results of the American Banker second annual survey of bank reputation. This 30 bank survey was conducted by the Reputation Institute an evaluated reputation across several dimensions including corporate citizenship, financial performance, governance, innovation, leadership, perceived workplace environment and products and services.

The article noted that BBVA Compass enjoyed the most improved image, moving up 11 slots into the No. 5 position. When asked about this, the bank responded by saying that they used social media such as Twitter to monitor and respond to complaints. In other words they listened to their customers and fixed their problems, building stronger relationships than existed before the problem. Problems can actually help build your brand. Their experience defined for them what good service is in banking.

There is another dimension to bank reputation that is seldom measured, that could have a significant impact on a bank’s ability to cross sell more products and services. Do customers see their bank as the place to go for more than deposits and loans? According to research done by Truebridge, the answer to that is no. Even for banks with a good reputation, that reputation is usually for a very narrow area of expertise.

Banks can change this, making it much easier to cross sell, but it takes more than words. Banks need to demonstrate to customers how they can help them with the financial issues they face throughout their life; from buying a house, saving for retirement, generating retirement income, and planning their estate. Customers are desperately looking for easy to understand information on these and other topics and they will do business with the one who provides that helpful information just when they need it.

Educational content, properly presented, can be the answer for banks that want to broaden their image as the place to go for more than deposits and loans. But content sitting idle on a bank’s website will not drive cross selling. Used right, educational content can be the driving force for cross selling, both in the branches and from the website.

Free Whitepaper: Using Educational Content to Drive Sales

Inside you will find guidelines on how to use educational content to drive sales from both your branches and website. This paper explains how to effectively implement and use content to fully tap that potential.

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It is the classic battle between WE and THEY in the financial banking arena.  You know your consumers (THEY) need the products and services that you offer but you struggle to find a process that effectively allows them to buy multiple products and services.  How can you bridge the gap between WE and THEY and make it an US relationship?

In the May 2011 issue of Bank Investment Consultant, Elizabeth Wine brings up some very valid points about the importance of cross selling and the poor execution that is happening inside many financial institutions.

Managing the cross sell is a task that does not have an end.  To do it well, you should never be ‘done’.  The art of cross selling involves all parties within the financial institution to be working together.  The same BIC article also stated that “ninety percent of a recent BIC survey respondents said the support of senior management was critical for the successful implementation of a cross sell program.”The basics of cross selling involve two main points:  first is the knowledge of the consumers;  second is timing.  If the consumer doesn’t know that you offer a product or service that they need, how are they supposed to buy it from you?  Moreover, when it comes time for them to ‘buy’, are you in their thought process … better yet, their buying process?

So how can your institution be in the right place at the right time with the right products and services?  You can educate your consumers on topics that will either save them money or help them avoid costly mistakes in the future.  If your consumer trusts that the information you are providing them is useful and valuable, chances are that when they are ready to buy, they will buy from you.  If you are committed to educating your consumers about issues that are important to them, you are well on your way to allowing cross selling and cross buying to occur.  What percent of your products and services are known by your consumers?

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If your consumers don’t know all the products & services your institution offers, how are they supposed to ask about them?…or better yet, buy them!

Education will create value if you provide it in such a way that it is useful and timely.  There is a lot of ‘financial information’ available in the market, mostly designed to tease you with bits of good information then go for the kill – the sell.  Education is not a priority in these cases and cross selling is not a priority.

Institutions have the ability to create one of two experiences for their banking consumers:  A Selling experience or an Educational experience.  It is understood that consumers will be significantly more likely to purchase a product or service from an entity that provides them with good information when they are in the ‘evaluation’ process than just trying to sell them the sizzle.  It is especially true when it comes to financially oriented products and services where there needs to be a level of trust before they purchase.If your bank or credit union decides to educate your consumers on a broad range of financial products & services that can either save them money or prevent them from making a costly mistake in the future, you will start to deepen your relationship and develop trust.  Once this happens, let the cross selling, share of wallet, multiple relationship consumer – whatever you want to call it – begin!

YARDSTICK:  Take an informal poll with some of your upper management and a group of your banking consumers and have them list for you as many products and services that their institution offers.  If there is a large difference, greater than 10%, in the average number of products and services that your consumers list compared to upper management’s number, you might want to evaluate your process of education for your banking consumers.

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How can a business book written by the founders of a small software development company be applicable to bank executive and marketing professionals? I asked myself the same question. REWORK was written by Jason Fried and David Heinemenier Hansson, the founders of 37Signals, a company that has created several products that help teams work together more effectively. For bankers, conventional ideas and methodologies aren’t what separate you from your competitors. Most often it’s your ability to be open-minded to new ways of thinking and putting them to work…or sometimes reworking them entirely.

Prior to reading REWORK, I was somewhat familiar with the company 37signals and the products they developed but never really knew their background. For most that have never heard of 37signals, they are a small software company that have developed a number of web-based apps for collaboration, information sharing and project management which are now used by millions around the world.

REWORK provides the reader with the insight into the attitudes of the founders and a basis for the reasons for their success. As a designer & developer myself, I wasn’t sure how their philosophies and ideas could really be applied to the large scale audience but they certainly managed to do so from my perspective. If you subscribe to conventional wisdom, this book may not be for you because the authors tend go against your experience and what has been instilled into you during your college and post-collegiate years. Nonetheless, this is a worthwhile book, for everyone from the single self-employed individual, the small business owner, all the way up to the larger institution management and marketing professionals.

It’s definitely geared more towards businesses that sell products but this isn’t to say the self-employed consultant won’t have just as much to take from the book. Maybe you’re a bank marketing manager or executive and your goal is to increase your banks cross selling initiatives. Every organization has to create a sales culture at some point and fortunately for banks, this already exists. So why is it so hard for your employees to provide your customers with the information and products they may need?

One of the chapters in REWORK is called “Say No” and it’s simply about how it’s always easy to just say yes. Yes I’m all set with my retirement savings plans, yes I have all the insurance I need…but when it cost 10 times more to get a new customer than it does to generate the same amount of revenue by increasing your existing customer’s business, why is it so hard to find and identify your customer’s needs?  In “Say No”, the authors suggest to forget the “customer is always” right. If you can “Say No” (insert your choice of words of course), you could effectively identify and satisfy some of your customer’s needs that you didn’t even know existed. I use cross-selling as an example here because its something that all banks are always looking to increase. But how are you supposed to effectively cross-sell when you can’t identify the needs?

If you’ve read our posts before, we’re always talking about the concept of content marketing and how it can help banks drive sales. In another chapter “don’t out spend, out teach” the authors talk about educating rather than focusing on selling and servicing. While most businesses focus on selling, educating your customer’s is what actually forms the bond that will earn your loyalty, trust, and respect. And as the authors state “Even if they don’t use your product, they’ll still be your fan.” Additionally the authors see teaching as a simple concept that your competitors probably aren’t even thinking about because they’re too attuned to traditional marketing tactics.

REWORK is filled with many simple principles that have the opportunity to make you and your team much more effective, productive, and valuable. I highly recommend this book to any individual in the banking world (or business world) and would suggest giving some thought to the lessons contained within. You may not even realize how valuable they are until you put them to practice. If you’ve already read the book, please share your thoughts.

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This story goes back to the mid 90’s but I will never forget it. It was a Saturday morning and I was standing in the kitchen when the phone rang. (This was before the “do not call” lists that we have today.) My young daughter answered and said, “Daddy, it’s for you.” As she handed me the phone, a pleasant... Read More >>

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Research will tell you that a bank brand attribute as a trusted institution is worth millions of dollars and the envy of so many other types of financial institutions (see recent article from The Financial Brand.)

The problem is breadth.  Banks are seen too narrowly, as the place to go for deposits and loans; a place to go to transact.  That’s fine if a bank is comfortable with a small share of their customer’s wallet (2 of 10) and are willing to watch other financial institutions earn more and more money by selling other products to their customers; products and services that can help people with other needs as they save for college tuition bills, save for retirement, and move into retirement and old age.

Is a bank’s brand image cast in stone?  For the most part, the answer is “yes”.  Think of this for a minute.  You walk into your dentist’s office.  This is the dentist that you have been seeing for several years.  He suddenly says, “Take off your shoes and I’ll take a look at your feet, I’m also a podiatrist.”  What do you think?  “Oh no you’re not, you’re my dentist.”  It doesn’t matter if a degree in podiatry hangs on the wall – you are in your dentist’s office and he is your dentist.  An image cast in stone.  If he really wanted to practice podiatry, he would be better off if you had no preconceived image of him as a dentist.

Banks are in the same trap.  They want to take care of more of the needs of their customers but they are tapped by their image – a trusted place to go for deposits and loans.

Breaking out of the image trap

Let’s start with what doesn’t work – just calling yourself something new, thinking that people will see you differently.  “We’re more than a bank; we’re a financial services company.”  Same branches, same people, same customer experience – what’s different?

But image can be changed.  I remember the time when the primary reason you went to the drug store was to buy medicine. On a recent trip to Florida, I saw a Walgreen pharmacy selling bicycles.  Image is changed by what you do, beyond just what you say.  Change the bank customer experience beyond rates, rates, and rates.

You can do something that establishes your bank’s credibility beyond your narrow image.  Give your customers something they desperately want – easy to understand information and guidance from someone they trust.  Your customers feel they have been turned upside down over the past few years.  They want help making financial decisions with the issues they face as they go through life.  Give them the information they need, when they need it, and their image of you will change.  They will see you as a resource for answers and be ready to do business.

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September 2010 – Truebridge and one of our clients were recently featured in an online article of Target Magazine. The article which was written by Jeff Molander, titled Give Them Value, describes how many marketers want to help customers make better decisions by becoming the source of trusted information and how few are actually turning this practice into leads and increased referrals.

Read The Entire Article Here

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about how our clients are using the Truebridge system to generate referrals, contact Pat Larkin at 800-476-6118 ext. 104 or send in a request to learn more about the EducateFirst Financial Marketing System.

Also try our new “Share of Wallet” Revenue Calculator to help gauge your opportunity for increased revenue by building your share of wallet and earning more revenue from your customers.

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It isn’t really the problems that build your brand but how you address them. For years banks have done research to find out what brand attributes are most compelling to customers. And year after year, they got the same answers – customers value good service. So banks built their ad campaigns around the promise that they provide excellent service.

But most of the time, the promise fell flat. Why? Because people perceived good service in many different ways. That all changed when those messages evolved from a simple claim “We have good service”, and started to show a particular problem being solved. Demonstrating a problem being fixed defined service in terms customers could understand. The power of the message was not in the claim of providing good service but in the demonstration of providing good service.

Then marketers went to work to find problems and show how the bank worked diligently to solve them. And guess what they found? Customers that had experienced a problem that was fixed had stronger relationships than those that had never experienced a problem.

Recently, I got my credit card statement by mail. I was furious to find a late charge and called up the customer service line. In an angry tone, I said that I did not think that it was correct. The customer service rep calmly told me that the payment did not arrive until one day after the deadlines and that the fee was automatically charged to my account. Just as I was about to boil over into an argument, she said, “That doesn’t mean I can’t waive the fee and I would be happy to do so”. In an instant, my feeling of loyalty for the credit card company went from 0 to 10; the fastest and strongest brand building I’ve ever experienced.

Try it out for yourself. Find a customer who experienced a problem and had it taken care of and one who did not and see what they have to say.

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