Value Customer Feedback

A bank must value a customer's feedback for it helps the organization gauge where it stands vis-a-vis competition. This allows it to react quickly to changing market demands and avoid adversity.

To retain existing ctomusers, banks must put in place a continuous customer focus strategy. This involves getting feedback from customers and putting that into action to delight them through improved products and services. The strategy must be to listen to customers and then exceed their expectations.

Banks must operate with transparency and educate customers even as they showcase how they are taking customer feedback into account. This will help them win back waning confidence.

Customer Advisory Board Perhaps the best way to incorporate customer feedback is through a 'Customer Advisory Board'. Customers can voluntarily participate in this unique initiative. A bank may put forth its plans before this board, which can validate it, give suggestions and offer active feedback. Such a partnership will not only help banks forge strong bonds with customers and retain their business, but also enable it to gain credibility in a difficult environment

This must be done with simplicity inside and sophistication outside: It is best that a bank does not radically change the way it conducts business. However, the simple yet vital changes it makes must be visible to the outside world.

Banks must also define a rational forecasting strategy which helps in developing and disseminating information to customers on where the bank is and where it is slated to go in the context of risks and challenges, and the mitigation strategies and practices adopted. Banks can do this by asking customers about their strategies and projections and taking that into reckoning when preparing a budgetary forecast which shows all stakeholders - both internal and external - where a bank is headed over the next six months or year.