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The mood among bankers gathered in New York on Thursday evening to honor American Banker's 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking was decidedly much more subdued, even humbler, than it has been in years past.
October 7
CHICAGO — The "Occupy Wall Street" protests may be transpiring far outside the panel discussion rooms at the BAI conference in Chicago's South Loop, but for bankers, the public dissatisfaction evident in those protests was front of mind.
During a panel discussion on achieving cross-channel success
"The point is there is an opportunity to look for a shared win with the customer," he said. "There are a lot of unmet needs."
One such strategy is to use strong analytics to properly match consumer needs for financial services with the proper channel or mix of channels (such as branch, Web and mobile) to improve overall experience and satisfaction, he said.
Van Dyke did not take a position on the protests or place blame for the unrest. He was joined on the panel by bank execs Ashley Ross, senior vice president of integrated channels at Bank of America Corp.; Tom McDermott, SVP of cross channel strategy for SunTrust Banks Inc.; and Jennifer Wilson, SVP of Internet Channel Strategy for BBVA Compass Bank.
While none of the bank execs addressed the protests, the panelists discussed the perils of channel migration for channel migration's sake. Moving consumers to lower-costs channels, simply because those channels cost less, would make a bad impression, they said.
"Forcing customers into certain service channels because of profitability will result in unintended consequences," Wilson said. "You have to find a way to give people a reason to go to a channel."
Banks have spoken about cross-channel consistency and experience for years, but it's perhaps never been as difficult to manage as it is now, as new channels such as mobile and new venues such as social media become more complex and more widely used.
Discovering what consumers want from their bank and how to match that with channel investment requires an expansion in customer research, better CRM tech, new ways to determine customer satisfaction, and analytics that separate how consumers generally feel about a new piece of technology with their comfort level in actually using that technology for banking.
"We look at use of channels versus what consumers prefer to do, and that drives [our] investments," said McDermott, who added the bank has combined consumer banking, marketing and tech departments as part of the effort. B of A's Ross also said her position works across channels, and the bank has looked for ways to target individual segments or individual channels.
Since most consumer interaction with banks takes place across a number of channels, Van Dyke said, it's useful to view the initial contact as part of a cross-channel strategy.
"When you look at online account opening, one out of two times that a consumer attempts to open an account online, it fails," said Van Dyke, citing his firm's new research. "Sometimes that's actually intentional, [the bank] wants want people to come into a branch, but sometimes it's a cross channel relationship from the beginning."
