How is your fourth quarter plan going?

How about your strategic plan for 2009? Any changes?

Executives are scrambling to adjust to a quickly changing market.

Where do you go for answers when all your business plans we based on assumptions that are no longer valid?

And how do you trust numbers from analysts and prognosticators when no one ‘saw this coming.”

Didn’t the people at SAS, Fair Isaac, Acxiom, Experian, Equifax and all their customers ‘see this coming’???

Or did the modelers and analysts see degradation in business performance, declines in sales, declines in business activity but fail to alert Management?

Surely the risk analysts at AIG, WAMU, Countrywide, Freddie & Fannie had a handle on the strength and risk positions of their businesses. Look at the Google search results  for  “SAS Programmer ‘company name”: AIG: 6,800; WAMU 5,870; Countrywide: 4,740;  Fannie Mae: 3,900 (Just Fannie – 63,300); Freddie Mac: 4,780.  i.e. http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=sas+programmer+fannie

Lehman, Bear Stearns and all the financials and market makers also use state of the art tools with bright to brilliant analysts and users…

So what happened? Or more importantly – How should businesses leverage information and analytics going forward?

First and foremost – Get to know your customers. Quickly!

Strategic Marketing Approach

Executives in retail, technology, business to business, all businesses need to immediately rank and score their customers and prospects for laser focused attention. (Bonus:  ideally, tie customers to the company’s balance sheet. Tip: link budget lines to customers’ sales/services cycles to connect expenditures to revenue; strategically sort first time customers and new customers to ensure proper and efficient communications and transactions.  Where possible, highlight customer sources – where do ‘best’ customers come from, i.e. partners, web, markets, locations, regions, activities.

Visualize, Monetize, Prioritize, Optimize

Visualize

Employees, partners, investors and marketers are looking for a map out of this mess. Give them a map! A visual map depicting the customer/revenue cycle from ‘awareness’ through ‘delivery’ through ‘use’ and ‘customer service’ enables all stakeholders to participate in your company’s plan. This mental model fosters communication across your company, across department lines. This mental model, the customer performance matrix, provides leadership platform to describe strategic and tactical initiatives and their intended effects and consequences.

Tomorrow I’ll cover Monetize –

Oh, and what happened to the “how did we get here when we invested hundreds of millions in tools, analysts and modelers… ?”  These companies didn’t go through the Visualize, Monetize, Prioritize, Optimize process and the analytical and modeling results became narrowly focused and projections became self-fulfilling while losing their relevance to the company’s and market’s overall health.  

Someone just sent me a blog about 'ease of use' as a software evaluation criteria and frankly I felt physically ill.

Why? Because ease of use is an enormous gimick, ease of use is as real as the Loch Ness Monster - people have reported seeing it (Ya, ya, ya someone at my old company used "Siebel' and they said it was great - did everything for them), millions of dollars have been spent searching for Nessie (Gartner, Forrester, CapGemini, IDC, IBM Global Solutions, Trade Magazines report numerous case studies and 'favorable quadrant ' placement, scientists and experts from many fields continue to chase it.

14 people have called or asked me about FDIC insurance and whether or not their bank is stable.

I answered the FDIC questions and also went to check bank ratings - but why weren't these people calling their banks?

Then I started thinking like a customer... Does it really make sense to call your bank's branch? Your likelihood of getting someone to answer the phone today is probably pretty thin - mid size banks with outsourced call centers are best able to respond... but who is equipped to answer questions about FDIC and solvency? Are FDIC and "Solvency" in the customer support script? Is their a "press 7 for FDIC explanation on the automated phone system? You probably want to talk to a person.  Good luck.

How about the banks' websites? I journeyed to WAMU, Bank of America, Wachovia, PNC, Citi, Bank United (By accident - but their stock price scared me - 2 shares for a dollar....), Peapack Gladstone, Commerce, Sovereign, Chase, Umpqua ... Scary - No "new" information, none of the sites were adjusted to the news of the day - Is your money safe at your bank?"

Of course ETrade, Fidelity and Ameritrade would be better - Nope (OK, the Law and Order guy on TDAmeritrade gave me some comfort - but maybe not the best ambassador when the government is turning banker)

The question. "Is my bank at risk?" and all the FDIC questions? Of course go to Money, Kiplinger or just Google - How about Google "FDIC" where one of the most popular searches is "Failed Bank List" really not comforting.

Are any banks strategically buying ad space on Google and other ad networks? Type "bank FDIC" in Google and you'll see advertisements for Bank of America, INGdirect (so FDIC was not all caps - confidence and trust building - not so much), PNC ads, Emigrant and CDBank.com - they are definitely getting traffic - but have they updated their destination pages? Their microsites? Nope.

So what is the point?

Banking is behind the curve in CRM. You knew that already.

Banks are not prepared for "news" and popularity? Business as usual, as in decades ago, is still the norm. Shouldn't disaster recovery include a customer contact plan (hint - a segmented customer communications plan)

Customers will tighten their dependence on having a branch nearby - that they can race to and get their money out. Yes.

Do bank marketers, communications departments and agencies know that "FDIC" was the 43 most popular search on Google yesterday (List of banks in trouble was no.42)? Wachovia Stock was #4 on Google Hot Trends?  

Bank web sites are a mess, indifferent, undifferentiating and untimely.

The point - Banks have a lot of room for improvement on all customer relationship management fronts.

ROI Impact? Bank's best customers are affected. When they feel vulnerable, uninformed and distant they are most likely to leave or be seduced by a relationship manager that "cares" ( = called them, emailed, contacted). Missed opportunities? If your a relationship manager, call your top prospects today, be prepared to discuss FDIC insurance structuring, your instituutions strength and know a little something about your competitors. Hand hold your best prospects. Database marketers, perform a report of all customers exceeding FDIC insurance limit, check maturities for prioritization. Arm branch managers, relationship managers and contact centers with call/responder list and objectives.