In this podcast, we speak with our colleague from SRM Europe, Pete Bainbridge. Pete is one of our Senior Consultants based in the UK. He brings 2+ decades of experience in customer and business insights for financial services clients, having previously provided similar services at Grant Thornton UK. Pete has been the lead advocate and consultant for the SRM global customer loyalty tracking and insights offering called CLIX, which first debuted in 2021. In this conversation, we talk to Pete about the current state of customer experience in retail banking, the differences in attitudes between US and European banking customers, and how the SRM offering can help build a robust database of customer insights and analysis. Additionally, Pete debunks a few myths about typical KPIs related to customer experience/satisfaction and how financial institutions can set better performance standards based on their unique goals.
In this podcast, we speak with our colleague from SRM Europe, Pete Bainbridge. Pete is one of our Senior Consultants based in the UK. He brings 2+ decades of experience in customer and business insights for financial services clients, having previously provided similar services at Grant Thornton UK. Pete has been the lead advocate and consultant for the SRM global customer loyalty tracking and insights offering called CLIX, which first debuted in 2021. In this conversation, we talk to Pete about the current state of customer experience in retail banking, the differences in attitudes between US and European banking customers, and how the SRM offering can help build a robust database of customer insights and analysis. Additionally, Pete debunks a few myths about typical KPIs related to customer experience/satisfaction and how financial institutions can set better performance standards based on their unique goals.
Welcome back to Firmer Ground from SRM, where we explore trends and strategies impacting the current and future state of financial institutions in North America and across the globe. This is Neil Dougherty, host of today's podcast and Managing Director of global Marketing at SRM. Every episode features perspectives from the world of banking and financial services, including thought leaders here at SRM, executives at future thinking financial institutions, and other experts from all corners of the industry.
In this episode, I speak with my colleague Pete Bainbridge, senior consultant at SRM Europe. Pete specializes in building out programs for retail banking clients to help them track and better understand the attitudes and needs of their customers. A critical item in the post-pandemic era. We'll chat with Pete from his office in the UK on the latest trends in customer experience for financial services brands and how his team approaches building KPIs and creating the right programs for clients. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Pete Bainbridge.
Hi, everyone. Neil Dougherty here, managing director of Global Marketing. And my guest today in the studio is Pete Bainbridge, and Pete is a senior consultant at SRM Europe. Pete's been the lead advocate and consultant for the SRM Global Customer Loyalty platform, commonly referred to as CLIX since its entrance into our services portfolio in 2021 and before joining SRM, he managed delivery of key customer experience and business insights projects at Grant Thornton in the UK and at Navigate consulting before that. So I'm super excited to have Pete with us today on the SRM Firmer Ground podcast. It's a long overdue discussion, in my opinion, on the state of customer experience and financial services. So welcome Pete, and thanks for joining us. How are you today? I'm great, Thank you, Neal. Thank you for having me. Excellent. Well, we've got lots to go through today because I know you've been kind of working on a number of projects over the last few years, especially kind of post-pandemic in terms of trying to just get a feel for how has customer experience and customer satisfaction kind of evolved, you know, since then. So lots to talk about today so we can jump right into it if that works for you. So if you could, you know, I'd love for the listeners just to get a feel and understanding a little bit about the history of the customer service tracking offering, which is what you call clicks. How did that come about? Can you tell us a little bit about kind of the history of the offering there?
Yeah, sure. I mean, I've been involved with this sort of offering for best part of a decade, really. The concept came around, I guess, in the late noughties, and it was mainly in response to the sort of the 2008 banking crisis where there was, uh, banks were struggling to understand what was going on, how customers felt about them, that sort of thing. And we always had a sort of strong suspicion, if you like, that there was a relationship between the experience a customer has with a particular brand or bank or a fee and the loyalty that that that that generates for them. So we commissioned a piece of independent research. It's done via survey panel and looking at this relationship between customer experience and customer loyalty. Um, over time this has been sort of built out into include other sectors such as insurance, pensions, investments, but also other non financial based.
Sectors such as retail telcos, those sort of things because we realized that people wanted to be compared with other areas, that customers don't just view their experience with a bank in isolation with another bank, it's their overall experience that they want to talk about. And then as things moved on again, we started adding some demographic questions. So, we've built this sort of large database of customer experience and responses to help us understand what is going on in the industry, but also where they sit within that. And it's that sort of benchmarking element I think is probably the most useful aspect of where do I sit with my peers?
And it's interesting, you mentioned the fact that it's not just, you know, bank to bank credit union, credit union building society, the building society, but they're looking across industry. They're looking at some other benchmarks and retail, which tends to be kind of the sort of frontrunner when it comes to experience or at least trying to, you know, generate kind of new levels of experience. You know, how did how did that reaction ultimately kind of help them, you know, build a better experience themselves? I'm curious.
I think what financial institutions can do is learn from those types of organizations that, you know, these are organizations are very customer driven, very focused on what the customer needs and what the customer wants and being able to deliver that to them. So I think it's, you know, they've been through all the pain and made all the mistakes and it's learning from those of particular organizations and what works, what doesn't work and what is what is the best thing to do by your customers is something that's very useful for them to use because we understand those organizations and why they generate those scores and how they get there, we're able to help institutions bring themselves up, if you like, in terms of the experience they're offered to their customers.
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And that might be a good segue into my next question, we've had this thing in place for a couple of seasons here. And I'm just curious if you can share some sort of key macro level insights from the projects that you've seen over the last few years in terms of, you know, what are some of the kind of general things that you're seeing when it comes to customer attitudes and performance of, you know, the whether they be kind of that kind of big, you know, Main Street, High Street Bank, or whether it be more regional community credit union building society. I'm curious if there are any things that sort of stand out to you over that time.
Yeah, I think, first of all, that that that initial link between loyalty and experience remains that, you know, if you have a good experience with your with your with your bank or credit union or any if really you will remain loyal to them, that that that link still remains. There's a very strong correlation between the two but it's slightly evolved I think. And I took in terms of engagement with customers. So, there's an even stronger correlation between the engagement um, banks and credit unions have with their customers. And by engagement, I mean, you know, do they trust that particular institution? You know, do they feel that they're going to do the right thing? Do they care about their needs and their wants? You know, do they actually care about them as a customer? And probably the final one around that is how much effort is it to deal with them? Yeah. How easy is it to contact them? How easy is it to get what you wanted done? So that sort of engagement piece we're seeing that sort of the sort of evolution away from that purely just experience based to that deeper, more embedded relationship with the customer. Um, the other one is perhaps related to effort I guess is around our channel. Um, when we first started running service, you know, call centers with a sort of primary channel if you like. But we've seen both the rise of sort of the rise of the web and app over time. That's now the sort of primary channel with which people who engage with the bank is the website and fast becoming the app being the sort of it's particularly prevalent in the UK but also in the US where we're seeing the sort of the the level of engagement through online being much stronger and much, much deeper than say perhaps even a branch or email or call or and some of the other more sort of traditional channels. And the final sort of two one is around why people choose a brand and why people stay with the brand. And aside from products and services, great service is the main reason why people choose to stay with the brand and why they choose a brand. And there's an interesting nuance in the terms that the credit unions actually its reputation and what were the reputations? Credit unions have a very good reputation as being a much more member based and much more engaging institution. So that's a key differentiator there. And then the final one is what sort of term, the sort of rise of the emotional drivers. So, you know, does the organization have a sense of purpose? Are they conscious of the social impact and the ethical considerations that they have? So these are all factors that feed into the relationship that people have with their customers and how those are evolving over time. And they sort of reflect the changes in society and the changes in what people deem important to them. It's not just about looking after the money, but also how they look after the money and how they choose to deal with them. I have a question for you. In that last one you mentioned around purpose in the data that you've seen specifically in the States, do you see that becoming kind of more prevalent in terms of both, you know, why they choose and why they stay? Is that something that sort of is a is a fairly upward, you know, straight line trend over time or has that kind of deviated? And I'm just curious. Um, it's interesting. So, you know, we sort of frame it in two, two ways. One, we say we ask people how important a sense of purpose is, and then we ask them to say, how, how, how well that financial institution, um, put puts across their purpose. What we tend to find is that it is important for people. It's not the be all and end all, but is one of the one of the drivers, the underlying drivers of that loyalty to the brand that they have that sense of purpose, that they understand what it is that they do, how they do it and the impact that they have within society. Um, so credit unions are a good example of, you know, institutions that tend to have a stronger sense of purpose beyond, you know, the, the share price. Sure. Um, and that that is becoming more prevalent. Think, think people's as, as services tend to get more and more commoditized. That's the differentiator between different brands that sense of purpose, social impact and ethical considerations.
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Well, appreciate you filling us in a little bit on that. Sorry if that was kind of a random, you know, sidetrack there. But just I want to move on to something else and forgive me if it sounds like I'm trying to move to the side of critiquing anyone, but I am curious if there are, you know, because I know that you guys take such a, you know, kind of a very sophisticated and detailed approach to, you know, thinking through what are the right, you know, questions to be asking, what are the right metrics to be tracking? I'm curious if there are approaches or tactics that you see when it comes to tracking customer attitudes, customer insights that you think financial institutions may be getting wrong? That there's maybe something that's either been potentially overused or just they get hung up on something that isn't as revealing as maybe, you know, history might try to prove. So, I'm just curious if there's something kind of from a critique standpoint that you've seen.
Yeah, I think I think there are several. So, um, one of the key, um, hang ups, if you like, for organizations is Net Promoter Score. That's always one that people focus in on adrenaline. It's, it's, it is a useful metric. There's no denying it. It is a very useful metric, but it's very much an outcome. You know, you your people will recommend your firm to friends and family if you have good service, good, you know, good channels, sense of purpose, those sort of things. So, it's very much an outcome driven metric. So, what people tend not to do is they tend to ask the question first and then interpret the data. So, you need to be very clear when you're trying to understand and track customer attitudes that you don't just start with the question and try and extrapolate the answer. You need to understand what it is that you're trying to focus on or answer what question you're trying to answer, and then go back for it. So that's, that's a sort of first point. Um, the other one I think is it's having a balance between what I call quantitative and qualitative feedback. So quantitative feedback is your scores, you know, how you know, how satisfied were you, you know, on a scale of 1 to 5 which are very useful and, and very easy to use, but the qualitative feedback is something I think is quite often underplayed, you know, by asking an open question, asking for a comment or verbatim back from a consumer. You can start to understand more about what are driving people's thoughts and attitudes. And we use quite a lot of analytics techniques to understand what those qualitative feedbacks are, whether they're positive or negative, whether they're um, on a particular subject. And we're able, you know, you're able to analyze those in a much deeper way. And it's very much what I call the voice of the customer. So you're actually taking something the customer said and able to present it back so you can see literally straight through the organization, from the board down through to the, um, 1s customer, you know, what's going on at the front line, what's going on when the rubber hits the road, it's very much that sort of link, if you like, between the two. Um, so those are probably some of the broader, um, areas that people, people get wrong is that sort of focus on asking the wrong questions and that balance between quantitative and qualitative feedback. So, I guess it'd be good for us to then kind of flip it and say, Well, how do you get that right? You know?
So when you think about voice of Customer, what are some kind of simple strategic ways to set sort of a baseline from both kind of a capture and a goal standpoint related to voice and customer for community banks, for credit unions, for those who are just trying to kind of maybe elevate their program or, you know, reevaluate it for, you know, kind of moving on from some sort of stock, Um, you know. Metrics, if you will, to something that might be more meaningful. How do. How do you see that happen often?
It's difficult. It is difficult. I go on that. But what we tend to recommend to people are that they have a core group of questions that they will ask their customers on a regular basis. So that way you're able to track things over time and understand what's going on. But also, you need to link those the timings of the surveys. That's another key, key points to specific points in time. So, for instance, if you release a new set of products and services, you know, how are they landing, how are they going through, you can then start to ask questions about those, you know, did you know about this product? What did you think about it, that sort of thing. So, it's linking the sort of rather than just, you know, continually asking questions of your consumers, you need to actually link them to the real world, if you like, and have that linkage between what I call the inside out and outside interview. So the sort of inside out view is, you know, how effective are you as a business? You know, how efficient are you, how well do you process stuff? You know, what are your customer journeys like? Are they, you know, smooth straight through processing, but also how that feels for the customer? Um, I for example, I had a customer, and we were looking at their complaints, their complaints processes, and they were very efficient. They dealt with their complaints very quickly. Customers were very happy with the sort of the efficiency with which they were dealt with. But then they, they, the qualitative feedback that came back was a bit more negative. And it felt they felt that it was a bit of a factory process, that they were on a conveyor belt, if you like, being passed from different person to different person and being pushed through the process in that particular way, which was very quick and fast and efficient but didn't actually make them feel particularly valued. So, the approach that they went through to rectify that was to give ownership of a case to a specific person and they would handle that case from start to finish. So, the actual impact of that was that processes actually took slightly longer, but the customer felt more valued, felt more involved, and they genuinely felt that they cared about them, right. As a result of that. So, it's linking those two, those two bits in terms of that sort of internal quantitative metrics and the qualitative feedback that you can get from consumers.
Well, and it's interesting to me, too, because I think we're coming upon a time here where obviously there's a lot of talk about AI, and we've seen, you know, in customer service scenarios, so much more automation. And yet, you know, oftentimes the survey results and the feedback yields that people don't really necessarily want, that they still want a hand to hold them like you just explained, they still want someone to be assigned to their ticket. And I just wonder, you know, as the kind of, you know, things move forward and, you know, the technology and the innovation, you know, takes over. How do we reconcile that? Right? Like, where is the opportunity to make both work? You know because I think that that could be a challenge as we go forward. It is difficult because, you know, you have the challenge that, you know, these new fantastic tools that, you know, technology is available at such a pace, but people still value that person-to-person contact. And I think there are two aspects, if you like, to customer experience that I termed in terms of the rational and the emotional. So, in terms of rational, people want their service to be convenient, personalized, efficient. They want to be able to do what it is that they want to do through the channel of their choice, be it online, in person, on the phone. Um, and um, you know, they just want to be able to, they want to, you need to be able to service them how they want when they want it. I think the best word is. So, for example, you know, a phone needs to be to the right channel, to the right person at the right time and they should be able to seamlessly move between those. So, I often use my parents as an example for these sort of things. My father, they're both in their late 70s. My father is a super tech savvy guy and, you know, does everything all his banking is done on his on his phone and his tablet, whereas my mom is a complete technophobe. And, um, for, for her, you know, she, she wants to speak to a real person. She wants to find somebody up or go to a branch. And so, you know, it's about personalizing and making it convenient as possible for them. So that's where we are in terms of the rational. So, when you're looking at to measure those sort of things is how easy was it to get to get what I wanted done? Um, how easy was it to contact them? How easy was my career results? Those sort of types of questions try to bring out those sorts of things. Um. The emotional side is perhaps a bit more difficult to understand and difficult to pitch because it's much more subjective in terms of being emotional. But, you know, people want an organization that cares about them and cares about their needs. So, you know, it's not just a case of processing their requests. It's understanding why they're processing that request and why that's going on and making it, um, 1s adjusting it to their particular situation. Transparency is always key. You know, you need to be honest with people. You need to be open with them. Um, I haven't talked much about value for money, but value for money is a really interesting one that, you know, traditionally value for money has been seen as a very much a cost-based metric, whereas actually people are much more sophisticated and nuanced about that, that they see, you know, service as being a key driver as well as cost. You know, these are other elements that, you know, filter into those. Um, and probably last ones around sort of trust, trustworthiness and secure. You know, they, they want to feel secure not just with, you know, their banking transactions, but the organization they, they, they are with is secure. And that they trust the organization to do right thing. So, if this sort of tension, if you like, between the two rationale which are very much, you know, process and operational type goals and the emotional, um, more subjective areas that people want to do.
Yeah, that makes sense. It's probably a good segue again because we're talking rational and emotional. I know you've talked to me a little bit about this before, so I'm always kind of intrigued by this. And as someone who works in space in the UK but works on projects on both sides of the Atlantic, I was just curious if you could share maybe some of the unique differences that you've seen between, say, a US customer base and a UK or European customer base when it comes to those sort of typical, you know, metrics around, you know, customer satisfaction related to their financial institutions, is there anything that you can kind of call out that makes it a little bit unique?
Um, like it may be of some surprise that people generally are much happier with their US banks and credit unions than they are with the UK based banks and building societies. Um, I don't know if that's a cultural thing. I think possibly that, you know, Europeans and UK in particular are more reserved when it comes to talking about money and they're much less likely to recommend a bank even if they have brilliant service in there, they love them and a great loyalty to them. They're much more wary of recommending anything to do with money. We see this in the UK when we compare them with, say, retailers that much. Happy to recommend a retailer. And the shop was brilliant, whereas a bank there would be much more reserved about it. Um, in over this side of the Atlantic we tend to have higher expectations around technology, in particular omnichannel. So, um, contactless is, is prevalent here. Um, I generally, you know, generally people here are carrying cash less and less, um, smaller and smaller retailers. In fact, most retailers even pop-up stands will take contactless payments. Um, so it's very, very easy to use systems and um, things like bank transfers, that sort of things, you know, they're all same day. So, there's a much higher expectation from the banks in terms of the technology that they have available to them. Basically, if you want to be a big bank in the UK, you have to have a decent app, otherwise you're not going to get very far. There are some that do or don't rather, but they tend to be more in the sort of savings market rather than the sort of checking account market. Sure. Um. And guess there's that sort of hesitancy. Hesitancy to recommend is drawn more out of a sort of slightly different cultural difference. Um, people, people certainly in the UK are much less likely to enjoy being sold to, you know, they, the sales process is much more softer and nuanced, you know. Right. You know, so cross-selling is actually quite difficult here compared to other markets. So that's, that's, that's a sort of interesting difference. But generally overall, people in the US tend to be more satisfied with their banks than they are in the UK, which may come as a surprise. I don't know. 2s It does come as a surprise a little bit, especially just because, you know, we've had we've had a lot of, you know, kind of bigger picture situations that have impacted, you know, what people can do, how they can bank, right, how they can interact. But, um, you know, I was just curious because I know we've talked about that a little bit and I guess it's, it's, you know, what I'm, what I'm curious about now, too, is, you know, you've got so let's just say, you know, you're working with an institution, credit union, bank, what have you. And, you know, they put one of these programs in place, right? So they're regularly looking at, you know, both kind of the feedback and sort of customer set and member set from their own pool. Right. As well as looking at the benchmarks from others, both in their industry and beyond. That next kind of big step is to take those insights and turn them into action.
Right? So I'm just curious, how do you see like who are the savviest institutions that are basically taking insights and making them actionable or even like what have you seen based on some of the projects you worked on where, you know, you feel like there's been something that's been swirling for a while. They were able to basically confirm that through the process of kind of the survey and feedback loop and they're able to make it actionable. I mean, any examples that that you can think of or you can share that are, you know, kind of the, the good example in terms of like, yes, you're doing this work on the front end and throughout the process, but you're actually bringing it to action.
Yeah. I mean we've I've worked with an organization in the UK sort of medium sized bank where they put in place a what we call a post call survey. So that's effectively after somebody had an interaction with their call center, their contact center, they, they, they will complete a survey. And what they're able to do with that survey is they're able to first of all, look at the results in real time so that for internal purposes, they can use it as a sort of quality check for staff and stuff. But the key one, I think, is they have a system of what they call red flags that, um, they can automatically in this particular case, flag up a bad call or a problem call so they can flag that up to the supervisor who can then and try to understand what went wrong with the call, call the customer back and intervene or do some extra action to remedy the situation. So, for example, you know, somebody phones up and something goes wrong, and they can't do what they wanted to do and they ring off and give a bad score on the survey. The supervisor can then intervene because of this red flag system and, um, you know, rectify that situation. That's quite powerful for consumers because, um, you're, you're proactively doing something about them. That goes back to what I was saying about the caring about them. You know, you're, you're being, you're showing that you care about the needs of the customer, that in this particular case their needs weren't met and that you're able to come back and say, look, I'm sorry your needs, but what more can I do? What can I do to help you? Um, so it's also it's, you know, people seeing that going above and beyond, if you like, where they were before, um, other ones where we've seen sort of direct, direct feedback. I have worked with an organization who had a recently set up a website. It was all singing, all dancing and fantastic and everything, but they were still receiving high volumes of calls for their contact center for things that could be done on the website, and they couldn't really understand why. Anyway, as a result of the feedback was that most people just weren't aware that you were able to do these things via the website, so they were quickly able to communicate to their customer base, Look guys, you know, we've got this great website, you can do all these things, but also they're able to adjust the scripting within the contact center to say, Look, thank you for your call today. We've sorted it all out for you. Did you know you could do this online? Let me help you with your login. You know, that sort of qualitative intervention if you like, to improve things. So those are the sorts of things that you can do off the back of a customer experience program that can really make a difference. And it's taken that sort of actionable insight, you know, something that comes out of your thing and do something with it, because otherwise it's not worth doing the feedback. If you're only doing it to monitor things, you need to have that actionable insight to drive out improvements, right? And you know, in my mind, that's the thing that always sticks out to me as the potential pitfall is, you know, seeing a customer put the effort into doing this kind of survey work. Right? Trying to get these attitudes, but ultimately not being able to do something with them. Right? Yeah.
So, you know, and I know that, you know, we've talked about that as a group internally, and it's great to see that there are scenarios where, you know, the program is actually built with the idea that, you know, we also have to take action beyond what we see here. Yeah. And one thing I'm curious about, too, is just around the idea of are there situations where and maybe this might be truer if you're talking about some of the larger FIS here in the States or potentially in the UK. I always wonder if sometimes the the survey feedback that comes through, you know, gets put in this sort of the change management cycle, but it becomes more about, you know, benefiting internal processes or productivity for the fee than it does actually benefiting the end customer or the end member. Have you. Have you seen that? And is there a way to kind of, you know, avoid that type of pitfall?
Yes, that's very common. It's a very common problem that you know, traditionally you start out with a goal of improving your service and, you know, focusing on the feedback that comes back through. But things get lost, if you like, with the internal processing. Oh, it'd be good if we could do this as well and make our life easier if we did that. I think you always need to go back to the sort of north star of the customer. The customer? What does the customer want? What can I do to improve the customer journey? Um, it's, it's, it's a tough, tough nut to crack in terms of the sort of program, what I've seen done quite well is, um, as you're doing your change program, um, include customers within that. So, for example, an organization I've worked with in the UK, they, they have a client forum where basically you have to be a customer to be a member of this forum. But they, they will not ask questions, but they will have subjects and you know, they will get a community, if you like, of people together who are customers to understand what's going on. And then when they're releasing new improved services or offerings, um, they're able to almost use it like a testbed to understand, you know, how is that going to land, What's going to what's going to happen there? Does it work? But I think the focus on the customer journey is that is the key is the key that, you know, you need to understand not just what their satisfaction is with the journey as a whole, but what each stage of the journey is, you know, which you know of that cycle of the cycle of the process. Yeah. You just get the feeling that there are times when one of those stages might get kind of gummed up with, you know, new processes or bureaucracy or even trying to do something that's more about, you know, cost efficiency, right? Then ultimately benefiting the end customer or the end members. So, you know, hopefully in any program where you guys are making recommendations, there's kind of a red flag for that as well. I'm sure that's come up from time to time. Yeah. Yeah.
So I'm just curious to what's next for the SRM CLIX offering any big plans and. And what's the best way to start a conversation about that service as well?
Well, I mean it's a great it's a great service because um, it it's interesting in its own right even if, even if your brand is not included within the research, it's still really interesting to understand the sort of big market, you know, macro market trends and everything. So, um, the, the sort of key elements for me moving forward are around benchmarking, you know, because, because we have this, you know, history of doing in the past, we're able to see, you know, compare results today with how they were a year or two years ago, etcetera. So, you know, we're looking to sort of rerun it, um, with a focus on sort of the US credit union markets to get that year-on-year trends, um, journey for like, you know, are people going up and down. What we've seen in the past is that staying still means you fall if you like. Everybody's moving up that line of, um, you know, experience and loyalty. And if you don't do anything, if you don't habitually change and improve things, you will gradually slide down the scale. So that's that sort of benchmarking element to it.
Um, can I, can I ask you a quick question? Pete? I'm just something you said brought it to mind. So sorry to butt in, but do you still feel like, you know, evaluating something kind of on a yearly basis or that sort of duration of time make sense versus, you know, even a shorter period of time, like a six month span? Because obviously things change quickly, right? Technology changes and there's things that are happening in the market. But do you feel like that kind of year over year comparison is still sort of the standard for a proper benchmark? Um, yes. The reason we do sort of it's normally between 12 and 18 months is because those sort of big, big trends, they do move and they do change big events kick start them faster, but they tend to move gradually. There's a sort of direction of travel to them. Um, so for instance, the pandemic was a big game changer in terms of people's channel usage, you know, online and app went through the roof. But um. The sort of long-term trends. You know of. What I would say, though, is in the sort of if you want to have sort of more immediate feedback and, you know, people, um, it's almost the smaller is better. So, we sort of quite often recommend just two questions in a and a comment as a, as a regular pulse, you know, on a monthly or regular basis. Um, post transaction is always quite a good, good way of doing it. So, you know, after someone's had an interaction with you, then you, you know, ask them a survey. Um, but in terms of looking at looking at the sort of overall position of a particular brand, that sort of regular heartbeat of annual thing, it gives you a good, gives you a good baseline, good idea of where you stand, and then you can focus in on particular areas as and when using those sort of much smaller, um, pulse surveys, if you like.
Is it fair to say that, you know, there's no such thing as too much data in terms of some of those pulse elements?
I'm always greedy. I always want more data, more the merrier. Um, yeah. I mean, there's a sort of minimum viable number of surveys that you can get a realistic, you know, good idea of what's going on, but any feedback is good. And to analyze it, it's we normally recommend between 100 and 200 responses is a good, good baseline to start with. But um, it's, it's an interesting challenge because obviously you get survey fatigue. It's, it's a, it's a big thing that if you just bombard your customers with lots of different surveys all of the time, they will stop answering them and they won't answer them in a particularly useful way. So, there are lots of ways around that. That's smaller, smaller surveys. You know, just simple two questions in a in a comment or some people offer, um, prize draws, you know, answer our survey and you're going to the prize draw for a, some kind of incentive right Yeah. And incentivize it and stuff. So it's a balance, I think it's fair to say that. Yeah, it's, it's great to have all the information. The other key thing I'd say is that, um, when you do, do a survey is to effectively report back to your customers. What, what, what's going on? It doesn't have to be directly to them. But you can say, you know, following our feedback from surveys, we've done this. So that communication element is quite important. So, it's all very well having that actionable insight, doing something with it. So, you need to actually communicate it onto your customers to make sure they understand.
That's a great point. And I think you can make an argument that that's not always or maybe, you know, it's not the rule. It's sometimes the exception. Right?
Definitely. At least the way it's communicated. Right. It may ultimately come out in some other. You know, action or some new offering or what have you, but it's not necessarily, you know, often communicated that way. So that's an interesting point. And hopefully something that, you know, becomes part of a kind of a typical way of doing business, just the ability to, you know, follow up and say, you know, you took the time to be part of this and here's what the results look like and here's how we're going to kind of, you know, here's our plan, right? If if there's a way to do that, I would imagine that that would also engender more trust over time for people to want to do that. And I know for myself, like the amount of kind of informational noise that's out there right now, it's brutal. It's hard to pick through and decide, you know, what am I going to actually spend my time on when I've got multiple financial institutions ask me for XYZ, But they're also cross-selling me, as we had talked about previously. They're also, you know, trying to upsell me in some situations. Right? So and obviously everybody's communication stream is a little bit different, but it's, you know, hard to sort of pick through the noise at times to actually be part of that feedback loop. Oh, definitely. Definitely. It's a common issue with these sorts of customer based projects that, you know, you do all the hard work, you make all the improvements, but the communications at the end is suboptimal. You know, it doesn't quite hit the mark. And, you know, it's almost a reward for the customer, if you like. Yeah. Thank you for completing the survey. We have done something with it. You know, people feel rewarded and like they're making a difference. And it sort of brings that engagement even closer between the customer.
Well, it also makes me think that there's probably some improvement that can happen between, you know, I don't want to call them silos, but just different lines of business within an organization, especially office, right? Even if you think about that idea of noise when you're getting you know, you would think that in the modern age, right? That if the feedback from a particular experience is more important than cross-selling or upselling at that moment, that they would avoid tripping over each other's feet. Right. But but often you see that some of that stuff comes in kind of at the same time and you get this feeling of like, I wonder if they're truly communicating, if there's a way that they know, you know, when these these outreaches are being triggered.
Oh, it's a common issue. So, you know, going back to the survey, one of the questions we ask is around what products do you have with that particular organization? So we're able to slice the data by product and people are quite often surprised by the different experience that people have dependent on their product. You know, the mortgage experience may be very different to the savings experience, and we see quite often see that differential, if you like, between the product silos. That one is great, one's not so great. And that's sort of that sort of almost, um, is a sort of matrix with the, the channel as well. You know, you have the same issue that the experience you have through one channel, the call center or the online is very different to the experience they have via a different, different channel. So organizations need to make sure they have that sort of overall, you know, single customer view, either through a good CRM or, you know, good documentation around their customer journeys. And again, it comes down to communication, how you communicate those to the customer and making sure that they say they're not tripping over each other to sell them each other's products or whatever. Right.
Well, Pete, I have to say, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today for sharing your expertise on what I think we all agree is a very critical topic. Right. And there's a lot of opportunity here to kind of keep the ball rolling and improve the way that financial institutions tackle these types of challenges. I hope the folks that are listening picked up a few new ideas, some best practices, just some things to think about from today's conversation. And of course, I'd encourage anyone who isn't already following our team in Europe to do so on LinkedIn to connect with Pete. Pete, is it fair to say you'd be the great first person to talk about to start a conversation around what SRM can do as it relates to the customer loyalty tracking piece? I always love to talk about customer experience. Absolutely cool. And you know, keep an eye on this or Europe as they publish more content related to these types of services. Lots of trends coming from a global perspective, from the team, from Pete and his colleagues beyond. So, Pete, again, thank you. I hope we get a chance to do this again soon.
Thank you very much for having me now. Awesome. Have a great day, Pete, and thanks everybody for listening.
Thanks for listening to Firmer Ground from SRM. Please stay tuned for our upcoming podcasts. Until then, you can visit us at SRM Corp. Com or on LinkedIn and Twitter.