Do You Know Your Clients? No Really...Do You?

My Bank After research­ing some options in my area, I’ve set­tled on a local and well-known bank called PNC. I love their mar­ket­ing, their iPhone App, their web­site and, for the most part, their peo­ple. That said, I do have one axe to grind this after­noon about PNC which relates to mar­ket­ing. By the way, Fri­days are my days to rant and rave a bit, so thanks for bear­ing with me. Wel­come to PNC I go to PNC week­ly to do my per­son­al and busi­ness bank­ing; it’s very con­ve­nient as I have three branch­es to choose from with­in 10 min­utes of my house. Each week I go to whichev­er of them fits most con­ve­nient­ly with my oth­er errands. After so many reg­u­lar vis­its to two of these branch­es in par­tic­u­lar, I feel like I know the staff very well. I see the same tellers each week and I remem­ber details from con­ver­sa­tions I’ve had with most of them. To them, how­ev­er, I might as well be a com­plete stranger. Just the oth­er day I walked into a branch that I hadn’t been to in a lit­tle while, and the teller I felt I knew best greet­ed me as if I were a new client. I’ve nev­er been greet­ed by my first name, ever, at my bank. I always get the stan­dard, ​“Hel­lo, wel­come to PNC.” I’m a cus­tomer — and a good one! I do every­thing with these guys! When I first joined, PNC was atten­tive and eager. They couldn’t serve me enough, offer­ing per­son­al and busi­ness bank­ing, deb­it and cred­it cards, and col­lege funds for my kids! Once they signed me up, I slow­ly just became a num­ber. Their tellers and staff are excel­lent, and their ser­vice is still friend­ly, but it feels emp­ty or stale, like a record­ing: ​“Thank you for choos­ing PNC!” The ​“friend­li­ness” almost seems fake. I keep ask­ing myself, do they real­ly know me? Maybe they need a quick course from Dale Carnegie’s ​“How to Win Friends and Influ­ence Peo­ple!” Com­pare this to a tes­ti­mo­ni­al I heard recent­ly: I moved to a new state a few months ago and opened an account at the near­est bank. I was pleased with the ser­vice at the time, but had no rea­son to return to the bank for two or three months. The next time I came in, the teller greet­ed me warm­ly. She said, ​“I’m sor­ry, I don’t remem­ber your name, but I know it starts with a P. How are your wife and kids — are they here with you? You all just moved to the area, right? Are you set­tling in ok?” And I had only been there once before! Caught Up in Busi­ness Systems Every busi­ness needs to have good busi­ness sys­tems. A well-orga­nized busi­ness will cre­ate an employ­ee hand­book, have good train­ing, and cre­ate sys­tems for every­thing they do: hir­ing, fir­ing, greet­ing cus­tomers, sell­ing jobs, clos­ing out jobs, and ongo­ing cus­tomer inter­ac­tion. But some­times busi­ness sys­tems can get in the way of being gen­uine. I believe a good busi­ness should be run with real peo­ple who love what they do and make the cus­tomer feel impor­tant. It is good mar­ket­ing. I’ll say it again: mar­ket­ing is every­thing a com­pa­ny does, good or bad. Peo­ple will remem­ber whether your ​“mar­ket­ing” leaves them feel­ing good or not. So, do you know your clients? Do you have a plan in place for mak­ing your cus­tomer rela­tions into good ​“mar­ket­ing?” A plan is always a good idea…but just make sure it becomes a part of who YOU and your STAFF are! Do you thank clients for their busi­ness? Do you send them notes and ran­dom gifts ​“just because.” Do you greet them by their first name? Or do your cus­tomers feel like just a num­ber? If you don’t know…ask them! Not using a sur­vey. Get on the phone or knock on their door and find out! Hap­py Friday!