The children of Literacy India accept a cheque with (front row) Indraani Singh, Secretary Literacy India, and (back row, left to right) Soumya, Helen and Bhanu.

There were smiles all around this week as Team India handed over a cheque for Rs60,390 to children from Literacy India. The money will be used to help finance additional computer hardware and new learning software at the school where staff volunteer. Thanks to all those who gave so generously of their time and money to make this possible.

After the race; left to right, back row standing, Tavneet, Bhanu, Dean, Paramjit, Garima, Praveen and Ravindra, front row, kneeling, Helen and Rahul.

A large proportion of the funds were raised through sponsorship for the Delhi Half Marathon and Great Run: Bhanu, Dean, Garima, Helen, Paramjit, Praveen, Rahul, Ravindra and Tavneet took on and completed this challenge. All that hard work paid off as family, friends and colleagues dug deep to pledge financial support for the runners; a fair trade-off for tired and aching legs.

Soumya and Indraani watch the children work

Volunteers wanted to raise money for the school that they work in so that they could actually see the difference it makes. The funds have come at a great time for Literacy India as they are introducing a new computer learning programme at the school. The programme covers the syllabus and allows each child to learn at his or her own pace with support from a teacher or volunteer.

Last time we promised some tips for setting up and using a Pinterest account in the financial services space so here it is our starter for ten to get you pinning in no-time.

Setting up your Pinterest account
Despite its phenomenal growth, Pinterest is still invite only but it’s easy to request an invitation by visiting the homepage. Once you’re in take care to use the same email you use for your Twitter feed since this will make sharing what you pin much easier.

Once that’s done it’s fairly straightforward to choose a username (probably your business name), write a description of what you do and add a logo and web link.

Play by the rules
Pinterest is naturally keen to discourage people from using the site purely for self-promotion. Brands, such as General Electric, Sony and Chobani – America’s no.1 yoghurt – are using the website effectively but they’ve put in the work to share content that’s genuinely interesting.  Chobani have posted 565 pins to date covering not only ways to enjoy or cook with yoghurt but fitness, travel, and even a board devoted to favourite cutlery.

Sony Electronics describe themselves as “pinning in tech, geek, photography and products since December2011”.  As well as including the very latest Sony products they’ve spent time pinning up images of products which have the greatest retro appeal and have a board of “Sony Art” which including a lunch box that looks like a playstation controller.

So, by all means use Pinterest to drive some traffic in your direction.  Use it to get people thinking and talking about your business, but be prepared to do so in a way that gives back as well as takes from the Pinterest community.

Keep things visual
Pinterest is a visual tool.  Images matter.

Other Pinterest users are only likely to follow you if you share high quality visual content that people want to look at and re-pin.  Pinterest is all about online curation so not everything you pin needs to be directly related to your brand; it just needs to be interesting enough to capture some attention.

Think laterally
The quickest route to success is to think carefully about what people want to look at online and then track back to see how that can be related to financial services.

How about a group of boards devoted to key life stages such as starting a family or retiring?  Use the images to capture the essence of what’s important to people at such times- focusing on the why not how of money management.

A board about wealth management advice doesn’t need to contain facts and figures, it could be full of images that show people connecting with each other, giving advice or listening attentively.

People love a touch of retro.  How about a board of bank architecture, a board showing the gadgets your business used to serve customers 20 years ago or a visual history of how fund trading and stock markets have changed over the years?

Share industry insights if they’re interesting and relevant.  Lots of people like sharing infographics so if there’s one devoted to your sector, or you’re willing to create your own, make sure you pin it up.

And finally, don’t overcomplicate things.  Even numbers can be incredibly artistic, moving or thought provoking so how about a board of quirky ways in which numbers are used? Or a board charting the history of money?  Remember, Pinterest is about driving traffic and growing your brand.  You can’t sell a fund via this channel but you can use it to get closer to customers, show them a softer side and engage their interest.

Make it easy to pin images from your main website
Just as you will be busily pinning other people’s images, you want users to come and pin up your own. Make sure there are plenty of images all over your website that people will want to share and check that the ‘pin it’ function can grab them easily.

Add a video
And finally, don’t stop there.  Videos can be uploaded to Pinterest too – so long as they’re interesting enough to watch – so remember, this is just the beginning.  Get pinning and see how your boards evolve.  Above all, have fun.

Hazel’s (our blogger) pinterest
Kurtosys’ pinterest

Once the Daily Mail starts talking about the latest social networking site, it’s possibly no longer the new kid on the block, but Pinterest has shot to fame so quickly that lots of people are still playing catch up with the latest addiction to hit the internet – visual online pinboards for social sharing.

What is Pinterest?
Pinterest’s mission statement is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”  Put simply, you scour the web for images you like, respect or just find quirky or interesting then ‘pin’ them to your virtual boards for other people to enjoy, ‘like’ and ‘re-pin’.  It sounds simple but is surprisingly addictive in real life.

Development began in December 2009 but it is 2011 that really saw the amazing growth that’s made everyone sit up and take notice, helped by the Pinterest App.  It was included in Time magazine’s “50 Best Websites of2011”and voted no.1 startup by Techcrunch.

By December 2011, Pinterest was one of the top 10 social networks, attracting 11 million total visits per week and driving more referral traffic to retailers than LinkedIn, YouTube or Google+. By January 2012, the site had 11.7 million unique users.  Whilst shooting past the 10 million unique users mark, Pinterest confirmed their position as the fastest growing website in history.

Who’s doing all the pinning?
Those keen to write Pinterest off as nothing more than a passing fad cite stats showing that the majority of users are women using it for retail fashion and home styling.  Whilst that in itself represents a significant opportunity for those who want to target females – leading the Daily Mail to ask whether Pinterest will become the Facebook for women? –  the latest stats on UK usage point to a quite different story emerging over here.

Mashable shared a great infographic comparing US and UK users on Pinterest, but in a nutshell, UK users are richer and more likely to be male.  What’s even more significant is that UK users are going beyond fashion and design, using Pinterest for online topics such as SEO and Marketing, PR and even venture capital.

Source: Mashable

But will people really want financial services pin ups?

Last Sunday I launched the first tentative steps of my own Pinterest board on “Things that are shaking up financial services”.  I’m not the first one to tackle money matters on the network and won’t be the last.  With hundreds of brands taking to the website it’s only a matter of time before a financial provider cracks it.

Next time we’ll share our best tips for crafting a Pinterest campaign but, in the meantime, if you’re a financial brand who would like to feature on my shaking up financial services board simply get in touch and tell us what you’ve been up to and we’ll do our best to add you to the board.

Social networks tightened their stranglehold
For anyone still wondering why Google wanted to launch Google+, the following chart sums things up.  Despite the fact that Google sites remain the most visited overall, measuring the time spent on various sites tells a very different story with Facebook way out in front.

So, regardless of the sceptics who continue to say people don’t want to read about financial matters on Facebook or ‘like’ an investment brand or asset manager, it’s time to face up to the fact that Facebook is where people are spending their time.

They might not ideally want to use those minutes reading about a pension but that’s the marketer’s problem to solve.  Most people don’t want to think about choosing an investment fund as they step off the tube either but advertisers know that using that space gets their products in front of people.

As people spend longer and longer on social networking sites it will become more and more crucial to find a way to engage with them there.

And for social networks, read Facebook
And to push the point home, increasingly, social networks do equal Facebook.  The minutes spent by the average user on Facebook eclipse anything achieved by the rest of the pack, although the stratospheric rise of pinterest will continue to raise some eyebrows.

People watched more videos than ever before
Video saw a massive 43 per cent increase in viewing during 2011.  We’ve written before about the importance of video in financial services – or indeed how to sell a tongue cleaner using YouTube alone – and we definitely still think this is an area to watch.

Video is an excellent channel for financial communication. It is clearer, more interesting for consumers to watch and puts the personal back into an industry so often accused of being cold and aloof.

And quite a few of used mobile devices
Mobile continued to dominate; by December smartphone penetration had reached 2 in 5 mobile users and data on usage revealed that mobile users are increasingly using devices for retail and online shopping, as well as researching information.

No review of 2011, however, would be complete without a mention of tablets.  It took seven years for smartphones to hit the 40 million mark.  Tablets achieved that in less than two years making people more connected than ever before.

So, perhaps the biggest challenge for financial institutions during 2012 will be designing ways for complementary digital consumption via a whole collection of devices.  It’s clear that people no longer use one device or another but switch between them during the day. Many more have embraced the habit of twin-screening and surely that offers huge potential for financial advisers.

What could you gain from using a video on YouTube to guide clients through an interactive fact find on their tablet?

If there’s a theme to take away it’s about accepting customer choice when it comes to device and channel and adapting financial content to suit those choices.  The days of financial institutions demanding that customers adapt are long gone.

For more analysis on digital trends to watch download the full comScore report.

 1.       Mobile working boosts job satisfaction
The flexibility to work from home was the third most important factor in job satisfaction according to a survey by Mashable.

Source: Mashable survey on remote working

2.        It might make you more efficient too…
56% of mangers believe that remote workers are more productive and less than half of employees think they need to be in the office to do their best work.

Source: Gist’s mobile workers infographic

3.        And it might even help stop you becoming depressed
According to research recently shared by The Independent, working just three extra hours a day doubles your risk of major depression as well as leading to a 60 per cent higher risk of heart disease.

So moving a business to the cloud doesn’t just need to be about lower operating costs or more efficient service for customers, it can be a key part of an employee care strategy too… it might even save some lives!

The role of the independent financial adviser is a strange one.  On the one hand, intermediaries – in any walk of life – put space between a customer and the end product, in this case a financial one such as a pension or investment fund.  On the other hand, given the undoubted complexity of managing money effectively, one could just as easily argue that by stepping in between a customer and a financial provider, intermediaries actually bring customers closer to managing their wealth.

Certainly, most customers who’ve enjoyed the services of a first class IFA would never look back.  For them, having someone to act as a go-between helps take the pain out of financial management, helps them set and work towards meaningful financial goals and ultimately helps them grow their wealth faster.

So, what does the future hold?  With RDR now just a few months away what is the outlook for financial advice.  Will there be more or less intermediation in the future and what form might that advice take.

There is an ongoing trust issue within financial services
It would be foolish to ignore the issue of trust.  Ever since the financial crash of 2008, trust in banks, fund managers and even IFAs has been at an all time low.

On the one hand this is good news for intermediaries – customers who are less likely to trust the end organisation, a multi-national bank for example, might be more inclined to pay for financial advice in a post RDR world.

On the other hand, more and more consumers want to take matters into their own hands.  Most people rely on personal recommendations and advice and worryingly trust their peers to provide better information than the professionals.

But financial products are getting ever more complex
That said, the number of financial products continues to grow exponentially.  Ever more complex features are designed each day to try and maximise rewards in a difficult market.  Ever more information is provided to knowledge hungry investors eager to read all about their asset manager or fund choice.

The end result is a level of complexity that is genuinely difficult for any one individual to cut through without a guide to lead them through the maze of products and choices.  This, in itself, is one reason why financial advice is most definitely here to stay.

New intermediaries are popping up online
What’s more, even as industry insiders worry about the future of IFAs, more and more intermediaries are popping up online.

Innovations such as Mint.com in the US or rplan or lovemoney in the UK are all intermediaries, so is Paypal or the Google Wallet, they just look and feel a bit different from the average intermediary.

Customers have demonstrated their love of online financial tools
Today’s connected customers prove on a daily basis that their thirst for information is virtually unending.  Whether it’s finding out what a hundred friends had for breakfast via Facebook or checking the intricate details of account statements via an online aggregator, consumers are demonstrating an amazing “need to know” and are carving out more and more time for largely online research and media consumption.

So, what about the traditional IFA on the street corner?
So what’s the upshot?  Well, in my opinion it’s twofold.

I firmly believe that intermediaries, of one type of another, are here to stay.  I think the need for them will only increase and I think customers will be more and more receptive to expert advice.

But I also believe that those same customers will demand that the advice they want is delivered at a time and place convenient to them… which almost certainly can be extrapolated to mean online.

It’s a worrying time for banks.  As new entrants begin to sew up cardless payments and others launch mint.com clones for day to day financial management it gets harder and harder to see how retail banks will continue to engage with their customers and build long term, profitable relationships.

A study by the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Psychology called “Manifestations of Personality in Online Social Networks” has been delving into what Facebook can tell us about ourselves – or others.  Earlier this month, Readwriteweb shared some of the study’s main findings, explaining the strong link between your real personality and the way you behave on Facebook.

Some might be inclined to say “so what?” After all, your Facebook account is run by you and so the fact that it’s an extension of your personality shouldn’t really be all that shocking.  Others, meanwhile, might be less pleased to think that their online persona is so similar to what’s really lurking under the skin. Much has been written about the degree to which online networking helps people to “hide” behind computers, inventing personalities, so perhaps the news that the truth will out won’t actually be all that welcome.

The study looked at Facebook behaviour traits such as the number of friends and engagement levels and mapped them across to the Big Five personality factors: “O” for openness, “C” for conscientiousness, “E” for extroversion, “A” for agreeableness and “N” for neuroticism.

The table below shows how Facebook behaviours map across to your wider personality:

Source: Readwriteweb

Whilst extroverts have the most friends and spend longer than others connecting via Facebook, conscientious people shied away from social networking- perhaps because they are too busy achieving and organising in real life to spend time in front of the computer?

Next, the study investigated how things like the number of photos you share are linked to your personality:

Source: Readwriteweb

In summary, the researchers found that it’s relatively easy to pick out extroverts or people with a high openness score using their social behaviour on Facebook.  Neuroticism was less easy to spot – which might be of some comfort to all those tortured souls who would prefer that the world didn’t share their inner angst – and, as alluded to above, conscientious people were conspicuous mostly by their absence.  Their polar opposites – those low in conscientiousness – made up for it though, using Facebook as a handy vehicle for their favourite way to pass time – procrastinating.

What, you might say, does all this have to do with financial technology?

Well, mainly the fact that before too long financial organisations are likely to be using insights just like this to supplement credit scoring or find new leads.  We’ve written before about insurance on Facebook or why digital technology will radically change financial services, but now Movenbank is about to make it a reality.

Check back for our post, coming soon, about the mobile bank in the pipeline that will use social data to choose and reward its customers.

I read a book recently called Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles. Ken is one of the authors behind the One Minute Manager series and Raving Fans is written in the same parable style as the others. This book is very American, very cheesy, but well worth a read if you want to transform your customer service.

It tells the story of when the ‘Area Manager’ (we never get to know his name) meets Charlie, the Customer Service Fairy Godmother. Yes, that’s right, a Fairy Godmother called Charlie – there are some bizarre concepts in this book, so be prepared to partially suspend reality. Charlie transforms the Area Manager’s ideas of what Customer Wow is all about and helps him learn how to turn these ideas into reality.

Everyone knows that great customer service is extremely important if you want to keep customers and win repeat business. Every organisation in the world claims to offer wonderful service but how many times have you received service from a company that made you say “Wow!”? Let’s be honest, most organisations who claim to have the ‘best’ service are actually delivering customer service that is ‘no worse than the competition’.

Raving Fans provides several fictional examples of great customer service. The one that stood out for me was an example of a taxi company. It’s so simple you wonder why all cab firms don’t do this. The book explains how the Area Manager travelled to the airport in a cab driven by Dennis, a taxi driver who had met Charlie some time ago. I won’t relay the whole story but here’s my take on it:

Imagine you have booked a cab to take you to your favourite restaurant. The taxi arrives on time, takes you to your destination via a direct route, and charges pretty much what you expected to pay. You’d probably leave the taxi as a perfectly satisfied customer and forget the ride before you even cross the pavement. The taxi service you got was fine; it matched your notional SLA, but nothing more. The next time you need a cab you might use the same company but if another taxi service happens to have posted a flyer through your door in the meantime you could well give them a try instead.

Satisfied customers just aren’t good enough.

Now, imagine booking a cab for the same journey but receiving an SMS 15 minutes before you are due to be picked up, telling you your cab is on time. When the taxi arrives you are greeted by name and with a smile. The cab isn’t just clean, it’s spotless and polished. When you get inside your driver mentions that today’s newspapers and magazines are in the seat pocket in front of you and that he’s happy to play whatever radio station you want to listen to. He even has a wide range of music, covering all genres on his iPod that he’ll play on request. Before setting off he mentions a cool box in the boot and asks if you want a chilled soft drink, complimentary, of course. Once the journey is underway, your driver briefly explains the route he plans to take and asks your approval, before driving you to your destination, all the while only engaging in conversation you actually want and enjoy. At the end of the trip, the driver opens the door for you, smiles, hands you a business card and tells you it was a pleasure to help you reach your destination.

I’ve never enjoyed a cab ride like that and if I had I’m sure I’d not only say “Wow!” at the end of it but also be sure to keep his contact details safe for next time.  Then, I’d tell all my friends!

The contrasting experiences show why ‘Customer Wow’ need not be expensive. Ok, the soft drink and newspapers need to be paid for but it’s not like he tried to impress his customers by arriving in a Roll Royce. Great customer service that people remember is often a collection of small things that, wrapped up as a whole, make a big impact.

Along with examples of great customer service, Raving Fans gives three key steps of how you can deliver your own Customer Wow:

Step 1: Decide what you want
Create a vision of perfection centred on the customer. In other words, put yourself in the shoes of your customers and imagine what perfect service looks like. Once your vision is clear, compare it with what you actually deliver and see where the gaps are. Take time over this, brainstorming ideas whilst considering ALL areas of your service and everyone who comes into contact with what you deliver.

Step 2: Discover what the customer wants
Of course, it’s tempting to skip Step 1 and go straight into asking your customers what they want. There are two main reasons why this isn’t a good idea. Firstly, if you go to your customers armed with a long list of interesting ideas that could give your service the wow factor, you’re much more likely to have a productive discussion than if you go to a customer and say “We’d like to provide a wow service, how can we do it?”.

Secondly, you need to be clear what your perfect service is and isn’t going to be, after all you can’t be all things to all people and realising it is the mark of a great service brand. For example, there’s no reason a budget airline can’t deliver customer wow as well as low fares but what it almost certainly cannot offer is complimentary drinks in a VIP lounge. If a lounge and drinks are what a particular customer wants, you should immediately direct them to the nearest full service carrier.

Your customer service is part of your product.   Any product should be researched before launch and your customer service vision is no different.  Testing your vision with customers and being prepared to alter your vision based on their feedback will help you take your service to the next level. Finally, realise that everyone who touches your product is a customer and your vision needs to include every single one of them.

Step 3: Deliver your vision plus one percent
To create a raving fan you need to exceed on delivery of your customer service promise each and every time the customer deals with you.  The customer needs to believe that they can count on you again and again. Consistency creates credibility.

Now, attempting to deliver perfection on day one is almost certainly unrealistic, meaning you’ll fail more times than you succeed. A better approach is to improve service levels step by step, growing your confidence along the way.

Where would you start if you wanted to deliver your vision of perfection all in one go? It would probably leave you immobilised due to the huge scale of the challenge. A better way is to deliver your vision in 1% bite sized pieces. If you improve your service by 1% each week, a year will result in a huge transformation.

Customer expectations don’t remain static so be prepared to continually enhance your vision but taking 1% improvements means you can stay flexible and alter direction easily.

So that’s my summary of Raving Fans. It’s a short book that’s easy to read in a few hours, packed full of thought provoking examples. If you can overcome the concept of Charlie, the male Fairy Godmother, you’ll come away with lots of great ideas to transform satisfied clients into ones that feel the ‘wow’ factor.

Whilst protecting personal information is one of the biggest concerns these days, customers are also getting more and more fed up with having to jump through security hoops to gain access to their bank account or investment fund, but whilst consumers are increasingly vocal about brands who fail to keep their data safe, it seems that when it comes to setting passwords and log-ons their own behaviour leaves a lot to be desired.

The death of the password… coming soon or wishful thinking?
Last week we shared IBM’s prediction that biometric identification will soon put an end to the pain of remembering countless passwords but if track records are anything to go by, that might be a little optimistic.  After all, Bill Gates famously declared the death of passwords as long ago as 2004.

For financial institutions, finding new and easier ways to identify customers must be a priority.  As mobile payments and mobile banking start to really take off, traditional players risk losing out to the new kids on the block who can makes their services easier to access and offer a seamless customer experience.

There’s also the small fact of reducing the cost of data security breaches and stolen identities.  Improving account security is a win:win for institutions and the customers they serve… but it’s not all about financial providers being more proactive.

Customers have a part to play, too, and looking down a list of the 25 worst passwords of 2011 – which is compiled based on how common each password is – there’s certainly room for some serious improvement.

Despite an almost constant stream of news highlighting security breaches, phone hacking or identity crime, customers continue to choose some of the most glaringly obvious passwords to protect their data… with “password” coming top of the list.

Here comes the whole list and the frequency of simple number sequences or obvious names really does provide a compelling case for improving account security.  Whether its biometric data, voice recognition, or pass phrases that rely on small nuances in the way someone speaks, the death of the password really can’t come soon enough.

25 worst passwords of 2011

1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football