A word to the banks: Trust is won through ongoing positive behaviour, not one-off gestures
The banks have a lot of work ahead of them to regain consumer trust. But the real graft needs to take place within the small, everyday interactions, rather than big, one-off gestures. Yell's Nigel Roberts explains.
Last week I received a letter from my bank and mortgage provider, ING. They very kindly wrote to tell me that rates on my variable loans were going up by 0.15%. That was it. No reason, no explanation, no context as to why my loan, which was only recently refinanced to a better rate, would be going back up again.
Think about the context. RBA cash rates on hold for 26 months, a stuttering housing market, and a relatively strong domestic economy and you wonder, firstly, why have the rates gone up at all? Then you put that in the specific context of the seemingly ever-growing profitability of the big four retail banks and it appears to add up to a profit grab, plain and simple.
However, there’s context for the banks too. Market conditions have meant the cost of borrowing has increased and has been hit by fluctuations in the Bank Bill Swap Rate (BBSW), an industry short-term interest rate that directly impacts on banks’ ability to raise funding for mortgages. So there is a technical explanation, but, does that make it right? And, how on earth can the banks get away with such a terrible experience?
They do it, because they can.
Think about the experience of receiving a letter, which you may or may not have read, being the only communication you receive about an increased cost to a service you receive, without an explanation of why it was happening. Compounding the lack of explanation was a lack of clarity of what the change meant to my payments.
But ask me, am I going to change my mortgage provider and the answer is, no. Not because I’m lazy, but because broadly, they’re all the same, with little difference between their overall experience. It seems when it comes to mortgages, the banks really don’t want to be that different. Or do they?
The exceptions that prove the rule
ING was following the pack, with most of the big four and non-bank lenders raising their variable rates, with two notable exceptions: NAB and AMP.
Notable not just because of their apparent stand against out of cycle rate rises, but also because they are the two institutions that have arguably taken the biggest hammering at the Royal Commission.
Both firms have seen issues raised about practices and cultures that clearly put shareholder value ahead of customer interests. It’s not been pretty and while they are far from alone in having these issues exposed, they do appear to have been the most visibly and highly criticised.
But while the industry as a whole has been criticised by the Royal Commission about lending standards, there’s been few concerns about the setting of rates. Which raises the question: what prompted these two to go against the grain?
Rebuilding trust through grand gestures
NAB and AMP have seen this as an opportunity to start rebuilding their reputations, through a headline grabbing action which will be welcomed by their customers.
NAB in particular has apparently made this an issue upon which they want to stand apart from their peers. To quote the Guardian: “NAB’s chief executive, Andrew Thorburn, indicated the bank’s decision was a direct result of an environment in which huge profits and revelations of misconduct aired at the royal commission had damaged the big banks’ public standing. ‘We need to rebuild the trust of our customers, and by holding our NAB standard variable rate longer, we help our customers for longer,” Thorburn said.
However, interestingly enough, Thorburn also said the bank would ‘continue to monitor funding conditions’, which seems to show that this may be a headline action that stands them apart in the short-term, but will likely see them revert back to the normal cycle.
Is this really how you rebuild trust?
What do you think impacts customer sentiment most; not raising rates, or raising them and providing a well communicated explanation of the context with personalised outcomes outlined?
Customers don’t credit you for doing something they would argue you shouldn’t be doing in the first place. Just because your peers are doing something which disappoints their customers, you not doing that doesn’t make you better than them, it just doesn’t provide a negative impact.
Think of it like this: if your friends break the speed limit and you don’t, does that make you a better person, or are you doing what you should do?
Whether that’s fair or not, that’s how many of your customers perceive this sort of behaviour.
So what should they do?
If financial firms are serious about changing perceptions and rebuilding trust with their customers they need to focus on the micro, not the macro.
The everyday experiences we have with brands are what build our perceptions of their credibility and effectiveness. Trust is won through ongoing, constant positive behaviour, not one-off gestures, however laudable.
Real credit comes when you focus on the interactions that make up your customers’ experience of your product. Like explaining why my mortgage rate went up.
Now that’s when you start to have an impact.
Nigel Roberts is founder partner at financial services specialist agency Yell.
Looking forward to the next wave of brand advertising from the banks and superannuation companies. What’s the bet most will continue with the same old patronising crap about putting the customer first? And they will be demolished on Google box.
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Remember when NAB ran that campaign they were ‘breaking up’ with the other ones in the Big 4 ? That, too was meant to signal that NAB was more customer oriented, really wanted to help its customers, etc. So much for that. While the bank marketing departments might really want to be helpful, and for the rest of the business to be more customer-oriented, at the end of the day you’ve got a bunch of very affluent bankers running the place.
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A word to the banks: nobody who has half a brain will ever trust you
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