Why Being the Primary Financial Institution Doesn’t Really Matter

At MX, we have over 500 clients around the country, and most of them are focused on becoming the Primary Financial Institution or “gaining wallet share”. But when was the last time you heard of a company gaining customers by asking “How can we get the customer to buy more”?  That is, of course, what most organizations want, but the questions successful organizations ask are consumer focused; “What problem does this customer have that I can solve?” “What can I offer that will improve consumers’ lives?”.  For this reason, I struggle with banks asking “How can we become the primary financial institution” rather than building programs to better understand the wants and needs of their consumer and deliver to, or exceed them in innovative ways.

I know, I know – writing about it makes it seem so easy!  Everyone is talking about customer obsession – everyone is commenting and writing about customer obsession, but there are few who have mastered it.  The examples we are often confronted with: Apple, Google, Netflix and so on – are the unicorns of customer obsession. They make the dream seem somewhat unattainable because of the massive amount of ground they’ve won.  Heck, it’s their fault consumers are demanding more!!  Or, is it?

I actually do not believe that Apple, Google, Netflix and the like have won because they’ve been more innovative. Their innovation definitely helped their growth, but I believe they’ve won because they listened; they asked the right questions; they pushed the boundaries of acceptable and they focused on nothing more than making the consumer’s life easier.  Take a moment to think about what a bank would look like if it was created to do nothing more than focus on the consumer and make managing personal finances easier.

1. What would their customer service look like?
2. How would it deliver and service products?
3. How would it capture new customers?

I think most of us can agree the bank you were just thinking of would look very different from what banking looks like today. Let’s take some of those ideas you had for a “new bank” and make a plan to implement one or two of those ideas into your existing institutions.  Even if you don’t have a perfect plan for customer obsession in your organization, moving in that direction WILL differentiate you from your competitors.

So – back to my previous point – focusing on becoming the primary financial institution DOESN’T MATTER because the focus should be on the relationship with the consumer.  To coin a phrase from my co-worker Chad Ramos, “Banks and Credit Unions should stop focusing on becoming the Primary Financial Institution and instead focus on being a different kind of PFI, the Primary Financial Influence, in the lives of their consumers”.  How do you become that influence – OBSESS OVER YOUR CUSTOMER'S EVERY NEED.  Those institutions who don’t make significant progress in this direction will move into the "realm of the irrelevant" and that’s even harder to come back from. Not easy, but crucial to survival!

I’d love to hear your ideas on what a customer obsessed bank would look like, how focusing on the customer's needs would change banking, or what you think needs to happen to keep banks relevant in the digital age!