Customer engagement: how little things make a big difference (one analyst’s experience)

Typically, analysts opine based on analysis of industry data, informed by product demonstrations, telephone interviews and occasional focus groups. This time, I simply share my own experience at a top-5 US retail bank to illustrate how even seemingly little things may have significant customer impact – both favorably or unfavorably. This past weekend, I had a document needing to be notarized. Both my spouse and I had to sign the document and we had a busy weekend agenda. Recalling that as an account holder at a top-5 US bank, notary public services would be free of charge, I planned to visit a convenient branch in-between Saturday morning events. What could be easier? Recalling this bank was one of the relatively few that offered digital appointment booking, I thought it brilliant to book an appointment, rather than taking my chances upon our arrival at the branch. Plus, I was looking forward to getting up-close and personal with the appointment booking workflow. The bank’s appointment booking application was marvelously easy to navigate, but to book an appointment; one had to select an area of interest. This is a reasonable and beneficial requirement, because selecting an interest area ensures the subsequent meeting occurs with someone with requisite knowledge. The problem was that notary services wasn’t listed in the drop-down menu of interest areas. No appointment for me! Without the ability to book an appointment, I sought to make sure the branch nearby to our other activities would be open when we were available. Back to the bank’s website. Easily done, except for the repeated “Make an Appointment” buttons staring at me upon nearly every mouse click, which at this point served as an irritant. It caused me to think. On one hand, well-done to the bank for making the ability abundantly obvious. On the other hand, why no appointments for notary services. Are such needs rare, or does the bank only invite appointments for direct revenue-generating activities? The closest branch was no longer offering Saturday hours, so we trekked to another branch that was a bit out of our way, arriving just past noon. Being a Saturday, I expected it to be busy, but was unprepared for what I saw. Three staffed teller positions were active. All offices were conducting meetings and there were four people waiting in the lobby - complete with restless children which we were happy to entertain. To “speed service”, I was invited to check-in. The process wasn’t exactly high-tech. It consisted of a clipboard resting on a small table with space to write my name and time of arrival. Most of the previous names were scratched out with a combination of black and blue ink, so I figured our wait time would be acceptable. User impressions aside, I was struck with the notion that this very large bank had no consistently gathered information about why customers visit their branch, if they were actually served or not, or what their wait times were – unless some poor soul transcribed all our scribbles into a database. Not likely. Maybe that’s why they don’t offer appointments for notary services. After about a 10-minute wait, we were greeted by a well-dressed young man offering to assist. He quickly affirmed his ability to perform notary services and asked what it was that we needed notarized. I presented him our 1-page quit claim deed, whereby he apologetically replied that, while he was a notary, the bank was not able to notarize deeds. If only we had another sort of document, he would have gladly helped us. At least, he offered an alternative for us – driving back to the UPS Store next to where we hadbeen. No wait + $2.00 and we were done. We didn’t even need an appointment. I learned an important lesson that day.