Banks must treat customers like kings

Banks must treat customers like kings
Mike Symes - Friday 22.05.09, 09:13am
Marketing consultancy, Strand Financial, in partnership with business and executive coaching practice, Harvey Coaching, surveyed a over a hundred senior financial services professionals.

The findings asked for views on a range of issues relating to leadership, governance and strategy within financial services firms in the UK. The results display some alarming perceptions from within the financial services industry:
• 29% believe good governance is only adopted where there is no impact on profits
• 38% cite an emphasis in looking after new customers, as opposed to existing ones
• 51% perceive Boards as delegating the leading of firms’ brand values to middle management
• 53% assert that firms put profit ahead of customer interests
• 35% consider there is a large risk that objectives such as profit, income and growth are set to the detriment of customers
• 38% maintain that financial services firms are largely undifferentiated.

Clearly respondents have indicated that the larger financial institutions and their customers are out of synch. On the one hand there remain serious customer issues regarding the levels of financial services literacy. On the other, there is an overall perception that large impersonal financial firms are struggling to articulate values and to ‘live’ them through the experience customers have through their dealings with them. The findings indicate that for the financial services industry to recover, Boards of these large institutions have to finally uphold the maxim that the ‘Customer Is King’.