The No Tool Zone

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On occasion I like to go to The Consumerist website.  A great place to go hear about scams and customer service complaints.  This weekend I came across the posting of an article or more of a rant from a Chase employee that has to upsell – titled, Chase Banker: I Hate That We’re Required To Pull People Out Of Line To Offer Upsell.  Ah, CRM data finally has a use . . . we can review people’s private lives and offer new products.  I think I need a shower.

The approach goes like this - you go into the bank to transact business and a banker comes up to you and pulls you out of line to “help” you.  What they don’t tell you is they have no cash drawer or ability to post transactions.  They send someone else to deal with your transaction while they review your account and “sell. sell, sell.” 

The banker doesn’t reveal their name, but enough comments have been posted by former and existing customers that you have to believe it’s true.  The genius that came up with this idea must be trying to hit some revenue target for a bonus. 

Now I can imagine a few customers will buy something, but how many close their accounts, posting negative comments on consumer forums or writing/calling to complain.  Why is “push” the preferred method to actually providing good service and developing good relationships where customers want to work with your organization.  It is both perplexing and costly, but again someone hits their target at the expense of the rest of the system.

I always find that giving customers what they want both increases revenue and decreases costs.  A banker that is not forced to do dumb things will have a relationship and be able to strike up a conversation naturally and with sensitivity to customer demands on time and other factors.

In a systems thinking world, we build systems that serve customer demands.  Sometimes that takes a little work to understand outside-in when most policies are made inside-out in accordance with what our boss demands and the dysfunctional targets they are given.  However, the pay-off is huge in happier customers, lower costs and higher revenue in the end-to-end system.  Oh, and let’s not forget happier employees too.

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Make the new decade a profitable and rewarding one, start a new path here.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about how to get started at tripp@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

Tripp Babbitt is a columist (Quality Digest and IQPC), speaker, and consultant to private and public service industry.