What Frightened Customers Want to Hear

The financial market meltdown is frightening for everyone. If you are a financial institution, you're putting your fingers in the dike while reassuring employees and customers. If you are in a different business, you're watching closely to plan for a business downturn and to spot opportunities.

What do you want from your bank or other financial institution?

1. Proactive outreach with recommendations for how you can best protect your assets. Blanket reassurances won't work. For example, customers want to know what to do if they have more than $100k in your bank—where specifically they should put it. They want to know what the penalties will be if they sell stocks or move funds out of equities. Customers with smaller accounts are just as concerned as those with large holdings. They are afraid their bank or broker or insurance company will go bust.

2. A personal call or face-to-face meeting. An email or link to a set of useful steps to take. Delight your clients by switching channels. If your clients interact online, reach out by phone. They'll be impressed. A phone call is helpful—particularly a personal one from a someone who knows what your exposure is and who will provide relevant advice. Or, for a customer who calls a lot, invite them into the branch or offer to meet them for coffee! Or send them an email with a set of tips and advice.

3. One or two actions you can take that you won't regret. If you want to reassure people, give them things they can do to let them feel in control. It may be as simple as setting alerts, or monitoring particular news events, or investing in a coveted stock when it falls below a threshold.

In just about any stressful situation, the brand you continue to trust is the one that understands your fears and proactively reaches out with a personal touch to help you feel more in control.

Comments

[PaulSweeney]

Great point from Pete. Here's something we've found with a major telco: when sending an outbound message, and you want to add extra assurance, give the customer something to do like confirm that this is understood by you, that you want the information pack posted to you, that you want the link the webcast etc. Pro-active communications with actions have very positive response rates, and where the "to do" is linked to speaking with a call center agent, even more so. A final interesting twist to this might be enabling people to connect with social media such as Facebook groups relating to the issue, etc. etc. Companies might also think about the various types of customer that may need different kinds of assurance.

[Patricia Seybold]

Thanks, Peter....Good points!

[Peter Horne]

Hi Patty,

I read your note about re-assuring customers with some affinity. I agree with your points and given my experience at the front line would add the following advice to your interested readers.

You need to think evenly about the communications needs of all three major stake holders - clients, staff and shareholders. Staff, who are also customers, are the most powerful customer communicators who have the greatest leverage on any communications program. If you can convince your team with a message, not only have you convinced an educated and critical audience and got vital feedback which can improve your message, you have also convinced your key influencers at the front line with customers.

So my advice is that if you are in financial services and want to look after your customers - look after your team! If you look after your team they will look after your customers. Then you can look after your shareholders by telling them how you are supporting the team to look after your customers. Get these in place and over the long run shareholder value will look after itself.

I hope things are going well for you.

Regards,
Pete