Should “big” and “bank” be in your vocabulary together?
Bank of America (largest bank in the US) CEO Brian Moynihan, new on the job, shared his vision for the bank’s long term strategy on Tuesday. Banks are being closely watched as they start to outline the ways in which they plan to recapture revenue that they are losing due to stricter regulation from the Credit Card Act of 2009, which has limited quite a few fees.
Some banks, like Chase, plan to get sneaky and use tricks to regain the lost income. BofA showed some early indications that it might be heading down the straight and narrow path when it announced (in a splashy WSJ ad) it was doing away with its overdraft protection for debit cards entirely, having decided that it just wasn’t in the best interest of customers to continue the program.
So it was with some hope that I read about the new BofA CEO’s plans for the bank.
- The main focus is going to be making existing customers more profitable rather than seeking new customers. They plan to do this by cross selling their various products to their existing customer base. My concern is that this means customers can probably plan to be bombarded with mailings and harassed by bank staff constantly. If they can pull this off without annoying people, perhaps getting different services from a single institution can be more efficient and cost effective for customers.
- BofA will focus on more modest and less volatile profits than before. I read this to mean less focus on risky customers which likely means less focus on practices that make customers unreliable, like sudden and drastic interest rate increases, credit line decreases and punitive overdraft type fees.
But in general he completely missed the opportunity to talk about serving customers better. After all, that is really what has changed over the last few decades with banks – they have gone from being institutions that were boring yet predictable in their financial results, and primarily focused on serving customers. There is a huge need for one of the large banks to lay claim to really serving customers, not just the lip service banks provide and then turn right around and screw you. Only time will tell what type of bank BofA will be.
Granted, Brian Moynihan was talking to investors, so perhaps it wasn’t the time and place to talk about the customer. Still, I was disappointed and it made me wonder if there is really any use for big banks for people who want to be treated like a valued customer.
Interesting | admin September 17, 2010
1 Comment
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By Catherine, September 18, 2010 @ 11:27 am
If you look up inept in the dictionary you will see the Chase logo. They are a classic example of what Seth Godin refers to as “broken”. They do not empower their employees to do anything that isn’t straight from what they are taught – even if it doesn’t make any sense.
Here’s one of many examples:
Night drop is broken. I am dropping a deposit off for a business. It’s an all check transaction. The bank is about to close, so I go in but there is a line of 20 people long. I turn to customer service and ask if there is someone I can just hand a “night drop” too.
He tells me, “We can’t do that I have to give you a receipt.”
Does the night drop give me a receipt? Ummmm noooo.
“I don’t need a receipt, it’s not my account. I was going to drop it in your night drop but your sign says the night drop is broken, so what do you do when that happens?”
You could watch him twist and turn as he did not know how to answer me. He then sighed (yeas and actual sigh) and told me he would take the deposit.
Do they have a clue that wonderful running credit unions and small banks take non cash deposits all the time and let people leave when they are busy. Hey – some even have inside deposit boxes for the convenience of their customers.
I can’t wait for this business to finish transferring away all their accounts so I never have to deal with another poorly trained Chase employee ever again.