Expert Systems at the Customer Interface

ESCFE (Expert System for Customer Facing Environments) is an integrated expert systems architecture which supports a three-way dialogue between British Telecommunications (BT) customers, staff and its technical and commercial support systems. ESCFE is customer facing—this means that the user interface dialogue is directed explicitly at the customer, as opposed to other expert systems/help desks which have a user interface directed at staff, who then deal with the customer in whatever manner they have been trained. In dealing with the customer, BT staff require a wide range of knowledge concerning the products and services portfolio, internal BT procedures, selling opportunities, customer-care policy and contractual liabilities. This knowledge can be contained within ESCFE. The knowledge is used to support a dialogue which allows for both customer- and staff-driven interaction, and for different levels of expertise in both customers and staff.     

商业银行客户忠诚问题初探

本文立足于最新的客户关系管理理论,结合我国商业银行的实际,从提高客户忠诚度对商业银行的好处、忠诚客户的分类、客户忠诚的形成过程、影响银行客户忠诚的因素、商业银行如何提高客户忠诚度等五个方面对商业银行的客户忠诚问题进行了探讨.     

A stochastic comparison of customer classifiers with an application to customer attrition in commercial banking

The classification of clients is an essential matter in commercial banking, insurance companies, electrical corporations, communication business, etc. Those companies frequently classify their customers by means of the information provided by the so-called classifier. Motivated by the need to compare systems of classification, we introduce a new stochastic order which permits the comparison of classifiers. The stochastic order is analysed in detail, providing characterizations and properties as well as connections with other stochastic orders and other classification systems. Such an order is applied to compare some classifiers used by a Spanish commercial banking to analyse the key problem of customer churn, obtaining conclusive results by means of real databases. Namely, the optimal classifier among them in the new stochastic order is obtained.     

What price loyalty? A fresh look at loyalty programs in the credit card industry

There is controversy about the effects of loyalty programs in the customer relationship management literature. Although some managers and researchers believe that customer loyalty created through loyalty programs leads to higher firm profits, others have found evidence that loyalty programs do not have a positive effect on firm's profits. In this article, we present our findings regarding the effect of reward cards and affinity cards on customer profitability in the context of credit card industry. We find surprising evidence that customers who own either a reward card or an affinity card generate significantly less profit than those customers who do not have these cards. Equally puzzling is the fact that these customers also have lower average lifetime with the firm. This leads us to a puzzle as to why these practices are widely prevalent in the industry. We find that loyalty cards provide value to the issuers in terms of risk management. They serve as a mechanism to reduce the risk associated with more profitable customers by attracting less risky customers. Thus, through loyalty cards the financial institution is able to balance out the total risk of the portfolio of customers by acquiring customers, who although less profitable, are less risky.     

Customers’ ways of making sense of a financial service relationship through intersubjective mirroring of others

The importance of relationships between buyer and sellers in marketing research is well established. This study contributes to relationship marketing (RM) research as it examines the microfoundations of financial service buyer and seller relationships. The study uses intersubjective theory and a qualitative method with the purpose of conceptualising the qualitatively different ways customers experience face-to-face interactions with a service provider. An empirical study is conducted to determine, based on the customer's own words, what is experienced in the interaction between the customer and the provider. Findings from the empirical material show that not all personal interactions between customers and a service provider, in this case a bank, can be labelled as relationships. Instead, what customers do perceive as a relationship is an encounter where the interaction entails symmetry in the way the customer and the provider mirror each other. When customers receive a treatment in opposition to an expectation of intersubjectivity, they will not refer to the situation as a relationship and, subsequently, according to the underlying assumptions of RM, do not willingly engage in further business with the provider.     

P2P网络借贷平台发展趋势分析

P2P网络借贷平台作为互联网金融业态的重要形式,以其不受时间和空间限制的灵活性,低廉的操作成本,越来越得到小微企业和个人贷款用户的青睐,其业务内容已经从早期的借贷信息发布和交易撮合向其它借贷和金融服务范畴发展,其服务形式、交易模式、风险控制方法也不断变化,与银行等金融机构合作逐渐深入,成为传统金融机构的有利补充。本文通过对上海地区P2P网络借贷企业的调研,从P2P业务所面临的问题,其发展过程中存在的消极和积极因素,客户需求和政策影响等内容出发,对P2P平台的发展趋势进行分析。     

内部营销、员工满意、服务质量与顾客满意关系研究

为了确定内部营销、员工满意、服务质量和顾客满意之间的因果关系,本文在文献研究的基础上构建了内部营销—员工满意—服务质量—顾客满意关系模型,并以35家商业银行的员工和顾客为实证样本,采用因子分析、结构方程模型检验了模型的假设关系。研究发现:内部营销不能直接影响顾客满意,但可以通过员工满意和服务质量而间接影响顾客满意;员工满意不但直接影响顾客满意,并通过服务质量间接影响顾客满意;服务质量既直接影响顾客满意,也是内部营销和员工满意发挥作用的中间环节。     

商业银行财富客户金融消费行为的统计与分析

本文分析了客户金融消费行为的影响因素和行为特征、商业银行提升高端客户拓展能力的要点.在对某分行进行调查的基础上,通过统计数据分析,发现财富客户具有以下行为特征:风险偏好多数为平衡型;稳定的客户持有基金、理财、保险、债券的比例较高;通过柜台和网银进行转账交易的比例较高;有客户经理维护时的客户稳定性高于无维护时,这些客户买...     

The quest for customer focus

Companies have poured enormous amounts of money into customer relationship management, but in many cases the investment hasn't really paid off. That's because getting closer to customers isn't about building an information technology system. It's a learning journey-one that unfolds over four stages, requiring people and business units to coordinate in progressively more sophisticated ways. The journey begins with the creation of a companywide repository containing each interaction a customer has with the company, organized not by product, purchase, or location, but by customer. Communal coordination is what's called for at this stage, as each group contributes its information to the data pool separately from the others and then taps into it as needed. In the second stage, one-way serial coordination from centralized IT through analytical units and out to the operating units allows companies to go beyond just assembling data to drawing inferences. In stage three, companies shift their focus from past relationships to future behavior. Through symbiotic coordination, information flows back and forth between central analytic units and various organizational units like marketing, sales, and operations, as together they seek answers to questions like "How can we prevent customers from switching to a competitor?" and "Who would be most likely to buy a new product in the future"? In stage four, firms begin to move past discrete, formal initiatives and, through integral coordination, bring an increasingly sophisticated understanding oftheir customers to bear in all day-to-day operations. Skipping stages denies organizations the sure foundation they need to build a lasting customer-focused mind-set. Those that recognize this will invest their customer relationship dollars much more wisely-and will see their customer-focusing efforts pay offon the bottom line.     

借贷便利创新工具有效影响了商业银行贷款利率吗？

本文基于手工收集的2009—2017年中国银行业数据,利用我国借贷便利工具创新这一准自然实验,以借贷便利工具的运用需要商业银行提供合格担保品这一要求为切入点,考察了借贷便利工具对商业银行贷款利率的影响。研究发现,借贷便利工具创设后,商业银行持有的合格担保品规模越大,其贷款利率越低,且这一效应随着时间推移逐渐增强。进一步的作用机制检验发现,央行的借贷便利操作扩大了商业银行向中央银行借款规模和贷款投放规模,从而有效降低了商业银行贷款利率,也表明借贷便利工具可通过商业银行合格担保品渠道发挥作用。因此,可以通过调整借贷便利操作规模、操作利率以及合格担保品范围的方式有效影响商业银行贷款利率进而发挥对社会融资成本的调控作用。     

High tech the old-fashioned way. An interview with Tom Siebel of Siebel Systems. Interview by Bronwyn Fryer

There is a growing awareness among corporations that the quality of the customer experience they provide directly affects their bottom line. Many are turning to high-flying software maker Siebel Systems for help in managing those relationships. The young company holds a leadership position in an explosive market-enterprise application software. But customer satisfaction, not dot-com chic, is foremost on the mind of Siebel Systems' founder, chairman, and CEO, Tom Siebel. The buttoned-down Siebel rejects the freewheeling management style and culture that characterize many Silicon Valley companies. As the former CEO of Gain Technology and a former executive at Oracle, Siebel believes in putting customers ahead of technology, discipline ahead of inspiration. In this interview, conducted at the company's San Mateo, California, headquarters, Siebel describes how this obsessive focus on customer satisfaction has been the driving force behind the company's success. He talks about how the organization remains true to its core values: a deep commitment to providing customer satisfaction; responsible fiscal practices that have created a cash-positive business amid today's cash-negative dot-coms; and general professionalism. "The notion of dressing in jeans and a T-shirt to greet the CEO of a major financial institution who just got off the plane from Munich is not acceptable," he says. Siebel Systems rejects the concept of going to war with rivals; instead, the CEO says, the company has forged an ecosystem of partnerships that allows it to support and integrate its own systems with other companies' software products and ultimately ease the customer's software installations. Indeed, Siebel says, the CEO's most important job is to understand what customers need and deliver that.     

商业银行个人客户经理制考核体系的构建探析

商业银行个人客户经理制起源于20世纪80年代的美国,通过专业人员对客户的专门服务,取得客户的信任、支持和协作,以达到企业价值的最大化。当前,各家商业银行倡导以＂市场为导向、以客户为中心＂的经营理念,也纷纷组建了自己专职的个人客户经理队伍,向有价值的客户提供差别化服务。本文重点介绍了个人客户经理制的核心内容,分析了当前各家商业银行在实施个人客户经理中普遍存在的问题,提出了要通过个人客户经理平衡积分卡来解决个人客户经理的考核,并就考核中应当关注的问题做了简要阐述。     

Segmenting retail banking customers

The desire to treat all customers equally, irrespective of their value to the organisation reflects the laudable but uneconomic service mantras of the past. New Zealand banks, using modern database management tools in conjunction with individual customer information, are migrating customers to cheaper delivery systems and adjusting their customer service levels (customer support, privileges, fee waivers, discounts, etc) according to customer profitability. The essence of this database management is still customer segmentation. Using a retail bank's proprietary customer contribution data in combination with survey-based customer data, this paper presents a quantitative eight segment ‘extension’ of Reinartz and Kumar's (2002) behavioural segmentation solution. Potential profitability in the customer-bank relationship is drawn from incorporation of share of wallet into the segmentation solution, providing insight into the management of each segment's customers, especially the ‘barnacles’ (loyal, loss-making customers) and the ‘butterflies’ (short-term, profitable customers).     

The Cambridge Container Company: managing customer-centric information integration

This case illustrates the efforts of the Cambridge Container Company, a fictitious manufacturer of plastic containers, as they consider methods for moving organizational decision-making toward a more customer-centric focus. Cambridge has four independent manufacturing units, each of which currently bases all operational decisions on internally generated cost and profitability information.¹ In 2000, Cambridge established a special enterprise level division to consider best practices for collecting qualitative product and service feedback from customers and to subsequently consider how to best integrate such nontraditional, nonfinancial information into their own operational decision models.This realistic scenario gives students an opportunity to consider the financial and managerial implications of moving to customer-centric operational decision-making. Business articles on the advantages of customer centricity abound, but few sources consider the financial and managerial consequences beyond increased customer loyalty and satisfaction. In actuality, this current business trend requires significant reengineering of information systems and management practices. Consequently, accounting methods must be re-evaluated for accuracy and fit with new systems and management practices.At the heart of this case is an opportunity for students to consider the appropriate balance of traditional financial and customer-driven nonfinancial information in management decision models for optimal profitability of the company and its individual units. In addition, the instructor can delve into a number of internal control and political issues related to information sharing. There is also opportunity for students to consider at a high level the complexities of balancing open information sharing and information security. Several alternative questions and suggested solutions are provided for the instructor at the end of the case. We suggest that instructors select only three or four of the questions so students can spend more time on each selected issue. This case is adaptable for use in managerial accounting, accounting systems or management systems courses at the undergraduate or graduate levels.     

商业银行与客户价值互换——提升商业银行创值能力的有效途径

随着企业边界的扩大，商业银行的可用资源已经扩展到经营的上游和下游世界。商业银行与客户之间的关系从利益对立方正逐步向利益共同体转变。商业银行只有。为客户创造了价值，客户才会对银行贡献价值。客户的价值贡献能力已经成为商业银行创值活动的主要影响因素；实现商业银行与客户在价值创造活动中的共赢，是提升商业银行创值能力、更新管理理念、培养核心竞争能力的必然选择。     

Credit allocation when borrowers are economically linked: An empirical analysis of bank loans to corporate customers

Using detailed loan level data, we examine bank lending to corporate customers relying on principal suppliers. Customers experience larger loan spreads, higher intensity of covenants and greater likelihood of requiring collateral when they depend more on the principal supplier for inputs. The positive association between the customer’s loan spread and its dependence on the principal supplier is less pronounced when the bank has a prior loan outstanding with the principal supplier, and when the bank has higher market share in the industry. Longer relationships between the customer and its principal supplier, and between the bank and the principal supplier, mitigate lending constraints. The evidence is consistent with corporate suppliers serving as an informational bridge between the lender and the customer.     

Relationships and the internet: The mediating role of a relationship banker

The role technology plays in building (or weakening) relationships with customers has become increasingly debated since the advent of the internet. Arguments, and some emerging empirical evidence, have shown that there is support for both sides of the argument; technology can both build and erode customer relationships. In this paper the authors seek to add further insight into this inquiry. The paper examines relationships that primarily exist within a technology context (in this case the internet) compared to those that primarily exist in a traditional face-to-face context (in this case the branch). The mediating role of a relationship banker is used to explore these dynamics further. Results show that the channel which the customer primarily adopts as the mode of interaction makes little difference to the strength of the relationship. What makes a difference, in terms of trust, is the existence of a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ one-to-one relationship with an assigned banker. Intriguingly, the effects of the relationship banker are dependent on whether the customer uses primarily the branch versus the internet.     

互动导向、创新意愿与创新能力

互动导向是一种新的战略导向,它反映了一家企业同它的个体顾客进行互动,并通过持续的互动从顾客那里获取信息,从而建立有利可图的顾客关系的能力。互动导向不仅能够提高企业绩效,而且能够促进企业创新。然而对互动导向和企业创新之间的关系却鲜有研究。分析二者之间的关系能够丰富互动导向理论。研究结果表明：互动导向能够提高企业的创新意愿和创新能力,从而促进企业创新。面对复杂、多变的经营环境,企业应该采取互动导向,积极提高自身的创新意愿与创新能力。     

Default Risk in Futures Markets: The Customer-Broker Relationship

The traditional view of the futures clearinghouse as an insurer that eliminates the need for customers to evaluate default risk is inaccurate. A clearinghouse member default in 1985 confirms that the clearinghouse only guarantees payment from member to member, not from customer to customer or member to customer. Thus, non-defaulting customers are subject to losses as a result of the action of individuals with whom thay have no contractual obligations. This study models the behavior of customers choosing a futures commission merchant (FCM) given the current legal position of the clearinghouse. In a single-period model with symmetric information, customers can eliminate their exposure to defaults of other customers or of their FCM only by choosing to trade through “boutique” (undiversified) FCMs. In practice, monitoring and rebalancing costs may impede the attainment of zero default risk. However, FCM diversification remains an important factor in customer choice of an FCM. When setting capital requirements, clearinghouses and government regulators need to consider the implications of diversification for both customer and market protection.     

BUILDING AND EVOLVING DATA WAREHOUSING AND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE ARTEFACTS: THE CASE OF SYSCO

This paper investigates use of data warehouse and business intelligence capabilities to integrate with customers in the supply chain and improve insights into customer sales. By making internal data warehouse sales information available to customers, additional value to those customers is created, eliminating asymmetries of information in the supply chain. In addition, the evolution of data warehousing into business intelligence is investigated, expanding sales information to include marketing associate performance analysis generated for internal use. Further, a methodology that was used for building a business intelligence system is also examined. Finally, what appears to be a business‐intelligence‐driven focus on enterprise resource planning systems is analyzed. These issues are illustrated using real‐world data warehousing and business intelligence artefacts developed at SYSCO. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.