Make Sure The Pluses Exceed The Pain

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I can remember being a little kid and going with my mom as she changed from one bank to another. There was a display table in the lobby covered with stadium blankets, an AM/FM radio/alarm clock, an umbrella, a camping flashlight and a bunch of other cool stuff.

Free gifts or incentives for changing banks.

Back in the early 70′s, banking was pretty simple. Conveniences like payroll direct deposits, ACH auto payments, recurring payments and online banking hadn’t even been conceived.

So, it was pretty easy to lure a customer to your bank. Offer to deposit $5 to a new account or toss in a free stadium blanket. But times have changed.

The pain of changing bank accounts is significantly higher today. You have to call the phone company, the utilities, switch your direct deposit, re-create your entire online bill pay set-up, and cancel all your auto payments. Ugh. We often stay with a bank we don’t even like, rather than go through the hassle of making a change.

Today, I received a postcard offering me a personal coffee maker if I’d change banks. Are you kidding me? Go through all that pain for a $10 coffee maker? No thanks.

The moral of this story? Make sure the incentive you are offering is commiserate with the pain of becoming your customer. Otherwise, the message you are sending is that you’re out of touch and don’t understand where your potential customer is coming from.

Drew McLellan

Vera,

Some customers are willing to share all their personal financial information and others are not. If a customer is willing to share it -- the bank can do most of the work.

Drew

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Vera Raposo

Drew that is a great solution and so wonderful that you could provide this help. And yes, it is all good news for us, but at the same time I've often felt that I'm so busy running my own business and growing it that who has the time for it all. It's great if they let you run with it and just do what needs to be done instead of explaining it all to them.

Ed & Vera,

We've worked with several regional banks to put together a "switch kit" as they're call in the bank biz. They really aren't that complicated. The customer does have to do a little bit of work in terms of providing some raw data -- but the bank can do the rest.

But as we all know, most banks and bank marketers are not on the cutting edge. Which is good news for the few that are!

Yeah no kidding Ed, it's really a no-brainer.

Ed Roach

If the banks were a little bit smarter, they would also take care of all the hassles associated with changing banks. I'm sure they could develop a system where it could be automated.

And we also need to remember, as we try to entice customers away from their current vendors, just how sticky those relationships are. No wonder we have to work so hard to earn a new client.

Persistence is a key. We need to be there, ready to welcome them, when they get THAT mad that they're ready to leave. And we need to constantly remind them that we're patiently waiting.

Excellent post Drew! You're right it's far too painful to leave a bank, and in creating or choosing our products, we need to think of ways we can keep our customers not only happy but realize that it is so much easier just to stick with you because of the direct link to having something that they absolutely need.