With investment opportunities, 24/7 call centers, online banking, credit
cards, even plans for small businesses, banks today don’t settle for merely
satisfying. Instead they are seeking customer loyalty. Here is how three
successful financial institutions are doing their utmost to make their
customers’ days.
ENGINEERING DELIGHTFUL SERVICE
BANK OF AMERICA
As an undergraduate at Georgia Tech in the 1970s, John Quinn learned an important lesson: engineering is everything. Even in banking. More than 30 years later, John Quinn, the customer service and support executive for Bank of America, continues to lean on his engineering principles as the leader of one of the largest customer service organizations in the financial industry.
Ironically, Quinn got his first job offer in bank operations from C&S Bank in 1977. He turned it down. Years later - after he finished an MBA, worked in management and operations at Procter & Gamble, handled international logistics for FedEx and after C&S merged with Bank of America - he decided to sign up. After joining an operations division of Bank of America, Transaction Services, in 2001, Quinn moved over to customer service and support and now "works for the more than 14,000 associates, who support the more than 34 million consumer households,
3 million small business customers, 13.2 million online subscribers and 6.4 million bill-pay users at Bank of America," he says.
Quinn thinks of customer service as "treating people the way you want to be treated. At Bank of America, we want to delight our customers every time they contact us. Research shows that customers who rate us highly from a delight standpoint are more likely to stay and grow with us. We know that is a big driver of customer loyalty."
Building that loyalty starts in hiring people with the right DNA, people who enjoy working with the public. The bank trains new employees in four- to six-week sessions that cover not only its complete line of services and products but also its philosophy and approach to customers. But it doesn't stop with the first few weeks. Customer service and support associates receive continued coaching throughout their careers at Bank of America. "There is a positive spirit among our associates and it carries over to our interactions with customers - whether you are on the phone, communicating via text chat, or in a banking center - every associate is an ambassador for Bank of America and we want our customers to know they are working with knowledgeable, competent people."
"Historically, the business model most companies followed was
to produce a product, sell that product and provide free customer service," says Richard J. Welke, professor and director of the Center for Process Innovation at Robinson. "Now, as things move from product to service, companies are looking for ways to
alter that model so that the service rather than the product is the profit generator."
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