Verticals
Finance
The Financial market has taken a huge black eye for the reckless activities of a number of houses and retail banking establishments. High profile chicanery from well-respected luminaries that turned out to be charlatans only fueled public outrage that will be decided by history if the hue-and-cry is misdirected. Turning PR headaches into PR nightmares are the continued activities of banks that just don’t get it.
The silver lining to this black cloud is that it overshadows previous gaffes of the public trust, such as loss of personal information, credit card and identity theft, poor customer service and the inability to make available bank employees able to resolve customer problems, unexplained fees and the litany of woes brought on in an effort to cut costs demonstrates the paucity of penny-pinching in the wrong areas.
Treating customers in a fashion that is so arrogant as to be borderline hostile is not sustainable. Unfortunately, by design or by accident, too many institutions are perceived to operate this way. Leveraging information technology to aid customer perception and loyalty, grow market share and productivity strategies is the lifeboat needed by some; another element to their strategy of increasing their base for others. It’s the critical foundation to deliver value to all stakeholders.
The ability to recoup network investments quickly and effectively is proven. Resolving customer issues quickly and correctly creates loyalty. Security should be table stakes. Margin pressures in the finance industry in particular, equate to profitability. This, logically, constrains funds available to IT upgrades, but ignoring those new capabilities creates a vicious circle that exacerbates customer retention and the ability to draw existing customers from competitors. It’s good times now for a steep price later.
Customers confirm that situation is dire for their CIOs and IT directors. With all of the Merger and Acquisition activity, many companies are diligently trying to determine what they have in their multiple, legacy systems that may or may not play nicely together. More importantly, simply maintaining what wasn’t working too well in first place is not viable for future growth. It is also not conducive to enable the organization to share information in a meaningful (customer-centric) and secure, compliant manner.
Add to that the branch structure, a number of which were in disarray from previous mergers, and you’ve got a real challenge. With regulatory compliance and the need to beef up security accordingly to the mix and path ahead becomes increasingly clear. It’s the law of the Serengeti – if it limps, it dies.
Those that take the right steps to improve the customer experience will emerge from this economic time with increased market share. Those that do not will be acquired, retired or reorganized as a much smaller organization.
