Correction to: Brand credibility and customer‑based brand equity: a service recovery perspective

Journal of Financial Services Marketing -     

Building a leadership brand

How do some firms produce a pipeline of consistently excellent managers? Instead of concentrating merely on strengthening the skills of individuals, these companies focus on building a broad organizational leadership capability. It's what Ulrich and Smallwood--cofounders of the RBL Group, a leadership development consultancy--call a leadership brand. Organizations with leadership brands take an "outside-in" approach to executive development. They begin with a clear statement of what they want to be known for by customers and then link it with a required set of management skills. The Lexus division of Toyota, for instance, translates its tagline--"The pursuit of perfection"--into an expectation that its leaders excel at managing quality processes. The slogan of Bon Secours Health System is "Good help to those in need." It demands that its managers balance business skills with compassion and caring. The outside-in approach helps firms build a reputation for high-quality leaders whom customers trust to deliver on the company's promises. In examining 150 companies with strong leadership capabilities, the authors found that the organizations follow five strategies. First, make sure managers master the basics of leadership--for example, setting strategy and grooming talent. Second, ensure that leaders internalize customers' high expectations. Third, incorporate customer feedback into evaluations of executives. Fourth, invest in programs that help managers hone the right skills, by tapping customers to participate in such programs. Finally, track the success of efforts to build leadership bench strength over the long-term. The result is outstanding management that persists even when individual executives leave. In fact, companies with the strongest leadership brands often become "leader feeders"--firms that regularly graduate leaders who go on to head other companies.     

Understanding customer experience

Anyone who has signed up for cell phone service, attempted to claim a rebate, or navigated a call center has probably suffered from a company's apparent indifference to what should be its first concern: the customer experiences that culminate in either satisfaction or disappointment and defection. Customer experience is the subjective response customers have to direct or indirect contact with a company. It encompasses every aspect of an offering: customer care, advertising, packaging, features, ease of use, reliability. Customer experience is shaped by customers' expectations, which largely reflect previous experiences. Few CEOs would argue against the significance of customer experience or against measuring and analyzing it. But many don't appreciate how those activities differ from CRM or just how illuminating the data can be. For instance, the majority of the companies in a recent survey believed they have been providing "superior" experiences to customers, but most customers disagreed. The authors describe a customer experience management (CEM) process that involves three kinds of monitoring: past patterns (evaluating completed transactions), present patterns (tracking current relationships), and potential patterns (conducting inquiries in the hope of unveiling future opportunities). Data are collected at or about touch points through such methods as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and online forums. Companies need to involve every function in the effort, not just a single customer-facing group. The authors go on to illustrate how a cross-functional CEM system is created. With such a system, companies can discover which customers are prospects for growth and which require immediate intervention.     

了解你的客户

在澳大利亚,身份窃贼的数量正在以每月3倍的速度迅速增长,而每年身份窃贼所造成的损失更是高达10亿～50亿澳元,其中很大一部分损失都由银行承担。但     

加快金融产品创新不断完善客户服务体系

一、商业银行面临着快速变化的市场环境和客户需求 加入WTO,中国的经济金融形势将发生历史性的变化,由此带来的投资理念、消费倾向乃至市场规则的变化,或早或迟会给商业银行的市场环境和客户需求带来新的变化,而且这种变化比以往任何时候都更快.     

差异化——银行品牌战略的明智选择

近期江苏金融办和江苏广电集团共同举办了江苏首届金融品牌传播高峰论坛,从最贴近消费者的角度,探讨了商业银行实施品牌战略的意义与选择.作为国内金融业较为发达的省份之一,江苏银行业不论在经营业绩还是在经营创新上都处在国内前列.对于品牌打造,江苏的银行家们也是有着深刻的理解.南京银行是中国城市商业银行中在主板上市的第一家,南京银行行长章宁表示,在金融产品同质化竞争的环境下,银行业品牌识别的作用意义深远.     

Customer-centered brand management

Most executives today agree that their efforts should be focused on growing the lifetime value of their customers. Yet few companies have come to terms with the implications of that idea for their marketing management. Oldsmobile, for example, enjoyed outstanding brand equity with many customers through the 1980s. But as the century wore further on, the people who loved the Olds got downright old. So why did General Motors spend so many years and so much money trying to reposition and refurbish the tired,tarnished brand? Why didn't GM managers instead move younger buyers along a path of less resistance, toward another of the brands in GM's stable--or even launch a wholly new brand geared to their tastes? Catering to new customers, even at the expense of the brand, would surely have been the path to profits. The reason, argue the authors, is that in large consumer-goods companies like General Motors, brands are the raison d'etre. They are the focus of decision making and the basis of accountability. But this overwhelming focus on growing brand equity is inconsistent with the goal of growing customer equity. Drawing on a wide range of current examples, the authors offer seven tactics that will put brands in the service of growing customer equity. These include replacing traditional brand managers with a new position--the customer segment manager; targeting brands to as narrow an audience as possible; developing the capability and the mind-set to hand off customers from one brand to another within the company; and changing the way brand equity is measured by basing calculations on individual, rather than average, customer data.     

The customer knowledge journey

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the hot topic for many organisations at the moment. this could produce significant returns on investment and deliver the objective of a one-to-one relationship with customers, but it also puts a greater onus on companies to actually deliver their ‘brand promise’. For CRM to be sustainable it has to embed the learning from its relationships with customers within a clearly defined customer strategy and deliver tactics that fulfil that common goal of true CRM.     

The customer has escaped

Every company makes choices about the channels it will use to go to market. Traditionally, the decision to sell through a discount superstore or a pricey boutique, for instance, was guided by customer demographics. A company would identify a target segment of buyers and go with the channel that could deliver them. It was a fair assumption that certain customer types were held captive by certain channels--if not from cradle to grave, then at least from initial consideration to purchase. The problem, the authors say, is that today's customers have become unfettered. As their channel options have proliferated, they've come to recognize that different channels serve their needs better at different points in the buying process. The result is "value poaching." For example, certain channels hope to use higher margin sales to cover the cost of providing expensive high-touch services. Potential customers use these channels to do research, then leap to a cheaper channel when it's time to buy. Customers now hunt for bargains more aggressively; they've become more sophisticated about how companies market to them; and they are better equipped with information and technology to make advantageous decisions. What does this mean for your go-to-market strategy? The authors urge companies to make a fundamental shift in mind-set toward designing for buyer behaviors, not customer segments. A company should design pathways across channels to help its customers get what they need at each stage of the buying process--through one channel or another. Customers are not mindful of channel boundaries--and you shouldn't be either. Instead, they are mindful of the value of individual components in your channels--and you should be, too.     

Winning the worksite customer

As the UK financial services industry advances channel strategies in response to developments in regulation, technology and government policy, a number of systems are evolving. One such system is worksite distribution. The environment is set to facilitate the development of this channel and a good deal of activity is under way. Key environmental drivers include the legal obligation on UK employers regarding stakeholder pensions provision; the continuing erosion in state benefits and the recognition that individuals will almost certainly have to provide for themselves in retirement; and the culmination of IT infrastructure development. Along with a tight labour market and reduced access to financial advice for the ‘mass market’ as advisers turn their focus to high-net-worth individuals, the role of the employer and the workplace as a source of information and purchase power begins to make sense — in essence, the role of a ‘portal’. This paper takes a close look at the customer potential of worksite marketing — both employers and employees — and the technology challenge faced by providers in winning their business.Worksite distribution (also known as worksite marketing) is the latest distribution channel emerging in UK financial services. There has been much discussion over the last two years on the viability of this channel in the UK. These discussions initially focused on comparing the drivers in the UK to the different drivers behind the development of the channel in the USA. More recently, discussions have focused on UK activity and the scramble to secure (pre-register) stakeholder pension (SHP) clients. This flourish of provider activity may well account for the channel becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, with many employers already being presented with a SHP or worksite proposition. ‘Best practice’ in this channel will be dependent on providing the best process for target customers — some lessons are learned from experience in other established markets and, importantly, from realising the inherent differences between the UK and these markets. This paper takes a deeper look at the subject and explores the worksite customer — who they are, how to win their business, and the enabling technology that will determine the outcome for financial service providers embarking on this channel.     

Creating the living brand

It's easy to conclude from the literature and the lore that top-notch customer service is the province of a few luxury companies and that any retailer outside that rarefied atmosphere is condemned to offer mediocre service at best. But even companies that position themselves for the mass market can provide outstanding customer-employee interactions and profit from them, if they train employees to reflect the brand's core values. The authors studied the convenience store industry in depth and focused on two that have developed a devoted following: QuikTrip (QT) and Wawa. Turnover rates at QT and Wawa are 14% and 22% respectively, much lower than the typical rate in retail. The authors found six principles that both firms embrace to create a strong culture of customer service. Know what you're looking for: A focus on candidates' intrinsic traits allows the companies to hire people who will naturally bring the right qualities to the job. Make the most of talent: In mass-market retail, talent is generally viewed as a commodity, but that outlook becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Create pride in the brand: Service quality depends directly on employees' attachment to the brand. Build community: Wawa and QT have made concerted efforts to build customer loyalty through a sense of community. Share the business context: Employees need a clear understanding of how their company operates and how it defines success. Satisfy the soul: To win an employee's passionate engagement, a company must meet his or her needs for security, esteem, and justice.     

Relationship marketing in the financial services industry: The importance of customer education,participation and problem management for customer loyalty

The effectiveness of relationship marketing efforts in services selling is to a large extent dependent on customers' commitment to increase the depth and breadth of their relationship with the organisation. In this study, we seek to extend current thinking by presenting a model that examines the relative importance of customer education, participation and problem management in driving customer loyalty. To test the relationships between these variables, we use data collected from 1,268 clients of a global financial services firm. Overall, the results support the hypothesised model and show customer education to be the strongest determinant of client loyalty. Current findings provide implications for multi-product financial institutions that are of theoretical and practical interest alike.     

An exploration of call centre agents' CRM software use,customer orientation and job performance in the customer relationship maintenance phase

Exploratory research techniques are used to examine the relationships between call centre agents' customer relationship management (CRM) software use, agents' customer orientation, and agents' job performance in the maintenance phase of customer relationships. Maintenance activities, which focus on customer retention and cross- and up-selling, are important to study because prior research suggests they have the strongest effect on company performance. In the financial services industry, CRM software applications supporting retention and cross-/up-selling activities benefit firms by raising revenues and reducing costs. The context for this exploratory research is that of in-bound customer service and sales call centres at three different financial institutions. Based on the analysis of data from key informants across these different contexts, this research suggests that CRM software use is a separate antecedent of call centre agent job performance and has a minimal relationship with customer orientation. Given the suggestive nature of exploratory research results, further research is warranted.     

Where does the customer fit in a service operation?

While management skills can improve service systems, a manager is better off if he or she first has a clear understanding of the operating characteristics that set one service system apart from another. This author offers one view of services, which, if followed, results in a "rational approach to the rationalization" of services. His view, quite simply, is that the less direct contact the customer has with the service system, the greater the potential of the system to operate at peak efficiency. And, conversely, where the direct customer contact is high, the less the potential that exists to achieve high levels of efficiency. This distinction between high- and low-contact systems provides a basis for classifying service production systems that can enable the manager to develop a more effective service operation.     

Selling the brand inside

When you think of marketing, chances are your mind goes right to your customers--how can you persuade more people to buy whatever it is you sell? But there's another "market" that's equally important: your employees. Author Colin Mitchell argues that executives by and large ignore this critical internal audience when developing and executing branding campaigns. As a result, employees end up undermining the expectations set by the company's advertising--either because they don't understand what the ads have promised or because they don't believe in the brand and feel disengaged or, worse, hostile toward the company. Mitchell offers three principles for executing internal branding campaigns--techniques executives can use to make sure employees understand, embrace, and "live" the brand vision companies are selling to the public. First, he says, companies need to market to employees at times when the company is experiencing a fundamental challenge or change, times when employees are seeking direction and are relatively receptive to new initiatives. Second, companies must link their internal and external marketing campaigns; employees should hear the same messages that are being sent to the market-place. And third, internal branding campaigns should bring the brand alive for employees, creating an emotional connection to the company that transcends any one experience. Internal campaigns should introduce and explain the brand messages in new and attention-grabbing ways and then reinforce those messages by weaving them into the fabric of the company. It is a fact of business, writes Mitchell, that if employees do not care about or understand their company's brands, they will ultimately weaken their organizations. It's up to top executives, he says, to give them a reason to care.     

如何提升信用卡品牌的满意度

在对2009年金融核心消费人群研究中,我们采用对应分析法(Correspondence Analysis)研究信用卡品牌问题,利用多元统计分析技术分析出信用卡品牌的认知度、渗透度和满意度三个评价指标的差幅:信用卡品牌的满意度指标差幅大于渗透率,渗透率指标差幅又大于认知度,这意味着差异化竞争的空间由大到小.消费者调查数据显示,招行信用卡在满意度指标上的表现最突出,差异化优势明显;而工行牡丹卡和建行龙卡在渗透率上表现突出,也具备一定的差异化优势.总体而言,多数中国信用卡品牌的竞争仍停留在认知层面上,而在满意度方面仍有较长的路要走.     

做好品牌ATM制造 做精专业ATM运营--访广州御银科技股份有限公司总经理吴宁

20世纪80年代末至今,欧美国家ATM行业进入了成熟发展阶段,非银行ATM出机机构、独立销售商（ISOs）、处理不同ATM交易层面的ATM交易处理商和提供机具维护的ATM专业化服务机构层出不穷。在国内金融市场,一批ATM运营商也通过为银行布设ATM的方式,与银行分享持卡人跨行手续费收入。专业化ATM运营商的出现,改变了银行仅将ATM设备作为成本投入的现状。随着ATM运营模式的优化及潜在盈利模式的出现,ATM有望成为商业银行新的业务增长点。