Last week Janet Yellen, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, addressed the SW Graduate School of Banking Foundation’s 128th Assembly for Banking Directors. Ms. Yellen’s message was both harsh (referring to the economy as “severely depressed”) and hopeful (noting that with government action “we may see economic activity begin to grow late this year”). Her message included what she obviously felt are priorities for community banks, “preserve capital, avoid excessive risk, and step up your lending” she said. But she, like others involved in the national discourse about banking, keep missing another item that should be at the top of the list: talk to your customers! Customer-centricity is the path to help restore trust and rebuild confidence.
With Congress and the media pouring on a little populist rage at the nation’s largest banks, consumer confidence in all financial services (large banks, community banks, credit unions) is taking a hit. What are you doing to help your customers rebuild confidence? Some are adopting what I would call the “David and Goliath Strategy”, e.g. “we’re the little guy, we’re not taking TARP funds, we’re well capitalized, we didn’t make sub-prime loans”, etc. That might get you a little short-term attention, but at the expense of the industry as a whole. Besides, that strategy is all about the bank…not about the customer. Promoting strength and stability will obviously speak to customer anxiety; but make sure you are connecting the dots back to the customer’s needs and concerns.
Within a few days of this post, I happened to notice a new ad launched by Keystone Community Bank (www.keystonebank.com) in Kalamazoo, Michigan carrying the theme “We’re All About You” and took an approach that wasn’t all about the bank. Nice.
[...] on the issue of having conversations with your customers (a topic we discussed previously here and here) – to include prospective customers/members and the community as a whole. And in [...]