Deliver delight

Marketing is pointless unless your customers are delighted with your product.

This is an extract from IMTW № 96.

Read on to learn why:

① If you get service wrong and you’ll likely lose a customer.

② Marketing should be tightly integrated with your customer service function.

③ The big City bonus is back.

④ Institutional capital markets players are embracing blockchain.

⑤ The foundations for a post-search online world are being laid now.

⑥ Humans need to be trained and empowered to manage AI tools.

⑦ Power comes from economic prosperity and technological sovereignty.

What's new

Bank of Ireland made a significant investment in its customer service this week, FinTech Futures reports.

In short:

• “Bank of Ireland is investing €34 million into its telephony and customer relationship management systems in a bid to enhance its customer service operations.”
• “The funds will furnish the bank’s 2,800 workforce with access to ‘quick single view of customer data’, and power the implementation of voice biometric technology to ‘improve customer authentication for better fraud protection and reduce call waiting times’.”
• “The initiative seeks to strike improvements to the bank’s self-service functions, such as requesting a new card, changing account information, and ordering duplicate statements.”

Why it matters

News of this investment broke just a couple of days after it was revealed that the number of complaints received by the Financial Ombudsman Service had jumped by a fifth in the second half of 2023. Banking and credit complaints were the main drivers of the rise – with current accounts and credit cards making up more than 40 per cent of its cases. Both these stories matter because they remind us how - in financial services - service remains the single most important factor in ensuring customers are happy and would recommend your product.

① Get it right and you’ve earned yourself an advocate. Get it wrong and you’ll be looking to marketing to acquire a brand new customer to replace the one you just lost. But there’s not much point spending money acquiring new customers if you’re going to lose them to poor customer service shortly thereafter.

Customers don’t distinguish between an interaction with your marketing, your sales people, or your service team. These are all touchpoints with your brand and should be consistent in tone, messaging and quality.

What to do about it

Take action

First, review a couple of previous issues of IMTW to remind yourself why customer retention is better than customer acquisition and marketing is every single touchpoint your customer has with your brand.

② Now, if it’s not already the case, I suggest you take the time this week to ensure your marketing team is tightly integrated with your customer service function. That doesn’t mean Customer Service should report to your head of marketing but he or she certainly needs visibility on that team’s activities and an opportunity to influence, guide and train them if required.

Get help

InMarketing is a dynamic repository of ideas, insights and other support for senior leadership teams in finance or technology who want to drive growth.

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To learn why:

③ The big City bonus is back.

④ Institutional capital markets players are embracing blockchain.

⑤ The foundations for a post-search online world are being laid now.

⑥ Humans need to be trained and empowered to manage AI tools.

⑦ Power comes from economic prosperity and technological sovereignty.

Visit my Substack for the rest of this issue >

About

Written for senior leadership teams in finance and technology,?InMarketing This Week?is a showcase for news likely to impact you - delivered with insight on why it matters and ideas on what to do about it. It’s published every Sunday to give you a head start on the week. Read extracts?here, or subscribe to?have each full issue delivered straight to your inbox at six, before it's available anywhere else.