Late-stage customer acquisition

I have been on an odyssey to open a bank account. It has entailed about four visits to the bank to handle the forms and three visits to be able to log on to online banking. Making calls or sending emails would have made life a lot easier, however in spite availability of electronic channels, that was to no avail. Employees need to see real people holding physical IDs.

The net result was intense anger at the waste of my time and a sense of persecution. Larger companies can assign staff. I have had to do the job myself. As the process dragged on, my thoughts turned to vengeance, possibly logging the process and selling it to a competing bank to give them the edge. Instead, I decided to write this and give the heads up to service enterprises and customers.

In the context of the AIDA customer journey (awareness, interest, demand and acquisition), the journey was in the late demand and acquisition phases. Those are the truly valuable phases, when transactions, the goal of the customer journey, become a reality.

If the acquisition phase is poorly planned and executed, there are two potential outcomes. The first outcome is that the customer can walk away, go elsewhere. All the investment in bringing the customer to the door is lost. I chose to stick with the process for fear of being subjected to the routine at another bank. The second outcome, where I now am, is mistrust. I will have to monitor the process of every transaction. This places the bank where I now am in the position where they may lose the business if another bank proves to me that it can do the thing right.

The bank in question failed in four ways.

Firstly, the requirement information on the website was wrong. As a result, I arrived with incomplete documents or the wrong documents, and the wrong expectations. I did not understand the process and documentation.

Secondly, there was no visible checklist or script. That was the reason why I had to make multiple trips to get documents certified, get documents from my accounting officer and write company resolutions. A simple updated checklist on the site, would have solved the problem. That checklist would have taken an hour of the bank’s time to make the list, another hour to produce and another hour to put online.

The checklist would have identified two phases, handling the documentation and getting the customer online. Unfortunately, that was siloed, the third failure. Although division of labour and activity silos make sense for enterprise, the customer does not experience it that way, and instead wants to register the account and go online without fuss. Sharing the checklist would have identified to the client where to ask for help.

The fourth failure was a lack of empathy for the customer’s need, and confusion. Had there been one point of contact, perhaps a single advisor, it would have been far more convenient. Instead, I had to firstly navigate the documentation, then untangle the online banking.

The broad point of this riff is that the relationship has been marred by mistrust before it has properly begun for want of understanding of the customer journey, particularly in the late stage of acquisition.

The customer journey is a relatively new addition to the field of brand management, yet it is vital. It influences perception and image in ways that have definite impact on the bottom line. Looking at my experience, it must be analysed and checklisted. I will be making this recommendation to my own customers going forward to preserve the value.