Banks are constantly looking for ways to improve their customer service to stand out from the competition. If you’re stuck on how else to find flaws or opportunities in your customer service besides customer surveys and mystery shopping, you may want to consider field experiments.
What are Field Experiments?
Field experiments are when you conduct studies in a natural setting. How can this be applied to your bank? Well, you or another team member could visit the bank and watch the daily activities in its natural setting. This is unlike a “lab” experiment where it’s a fake setting and you control everything. In other words, a “lab” experiment would be like a “mockup” bank day where the customers know that this is a test and you’ve prepared the day as a test. Versus a field experiment is just a normal banking day where nothing is planned and a designated person is observing the day. Now that we’ve gone over the basics. Let’s dive into three major ways that field experiments can help to improve your bank’s customer service.
Learn the Types of Questions that Customers Ask in Person
By observing conversations you will be able to learn what common questions arise in person from customers. This insight will help you not only update your communication mediums like social media, website, newsletter and more but you’ll also be able to train your branch employees on how to answers these questions so they’re prepared.
Make Sure that the Branch Employees are Following Rules and Regulations
When branch team members join the bank, they are given a set of rules and regulations to be compliant in the bank processes and to provide great customer service. Maybe one of your rules is to have employees always introduce themselves to new customers or to always call customers by their names. By observing them in their everyday environment you will be able to witness if they’re following the rules in order to provide great customer service.
Find Opportunities to Improve the Bank’s Customer Service
While observing the branch’s daily activities you might be able to notice areas to improve upon that you haven’t noticed before. This is important because you’ll be able to find somewhere to excel that your competitor might be lacking in. And by bringing in fresh eyes to the bank, you’ll be able to pick up on it.
How Does This Relate to Marketing?
Anything that makes you stand out from the competition and is an added benefit to what you provide is marketable. If you can determine what that might be, then you’ll be able to make your job much easier. Field experiments are a great way to be continuously improving your bank’s customer service and find new elements to market to your target audience.
If you’d like to learn other ways to improve your bank’s customer service check out my previous blog post on creating killer bank surveys to get client feedback.
