How to SCREAM in your BANK
It screams on every front, the moment you look away it starts reeling inside you like those old documentaries. Filled with utter disgust sending a clear NO NO sign to your brain. Have you guessed it yet? If yes, give a small pat to yourself you must have suffered enough to memorize this exact experience for the people who only got a cloud inside their head, bear with me for a few more moments as I unfold the story.
They were driving fast on a desert highway. The warm smell, the cool wind in their hair, the pleasant feeling that comes with the setting sun had covered all of them. Soon the order of men came into their view, peeling the vista of nature there stood a billboard, a hotel to welcome these arid travelers.
(Now before I move on to the next part of the story, a quick exercise. Guess an approximate list of things these travelers might expect, it should not have to be exhaustive or detailed.)
The second part of this story is not a pleasant one. As it turns out the hotel with all its splendor and orchestration was not expecting these travelers. Thus, the resulting disharmony and the birth of a capitalistic quip. While the management gurus found a solution and defined ‘Target Group’ and ‘Customer Experience’ to minimize variance, waves of evolution bashed right at it. Every time you and I face a new experience the cogwheels of the other side have to adjust to a new frequency. A balance between me and us, individual and group the battle of perception versus the system checklist.
So, this is the ground of a new lens where we will now start intensifying the light gradually until it finally reaches the core. Let’s start breaking the enigma, your list of expectations will be useful now. We will start with dissatisfaction first. Many of you have guessed it in the first part of this article. It is that big NO inside us. In simple terms, it’s the result of a disparity. Another jargon which evoked a lot of sensation on various political and social literature. But we will cut all its historical ties and put it on our day to day experiences, strictly within service transactions.
Your favorite e-retailer connects with their customer care within a few minutes, you complain and get a confirmation in your email. Happy you, you move forward with your next buy. You faced difficulty with your transaction status, you called your bank and then? Not so prompt, at least for most of our banks. Whooaaaa!! the professional within you is screaming now, they are different industries! How can you compare apples to oranges?
Let’s agree to disagree for the moment and analyze the difference. For both of these, you connected with a customer care executive, no difference there, right? Then, you explained your issue and expected a solution, now, starts the great division. Different expectations from different industries. We cannot simply remove the barrier and start a race within industries. So? The lender is different from a seller. We have now successfully jumped all the barriers and reached a convenient solution. Congrats, but we mixed a subtle difference, the difference of response and resolution.
Across industries, we can expect different resolution times because it closely relates to their core service but the response is an open field not guarded by the carefully crafted industry barriers. A lot of jargon there so let’s pause and use the expectation checklist that we made for those desert travelers.
Filled with their experience they wanted to rest for the day. A place that can closely relate to their experience an extended part of the place they just came through. If you look at your checklist now, you can now relate your choices with this. Nothing novel but a simple careful extension of the experience. The term I would like to use is ‘Service Parity’.
The service parity is not to compare the desert with a hotel. It is to maintain the parity between these two experiences. The harmony of experience, an extension, or in some cases, up-gradation of it. Now coming back to our difference in lender and seller. In the era of information, the industries are all different and same at the same time. Different in their core value proposition and not so different in their shared value proposition. So our favorite e-retailer and reliable bank are not so different either. In the end, they both want to create a unique customer experience that can be monetized.
Now there is a dilemma and for some of us a tinge of disgust. A dilemma induced by W. Edwards Deming who famously quoted, “In God we trust others must bring data” and the tinge of disgust both for the not so pleasant example given which subtly disrespect the services of our most famous institutions and the superior tone of this article which profess to bring light in an illuminated society. So in the next few minutes of your swaying attention, I will try to make some amends by cutting the edges of this philosophy like structure and make it look like a tool to the best of my ability.
Businesses are compared to their peers using benchmarking to get a relative position within the industry. While it is helpful, in this era of information it is much required to get a holistic picture across industries that can help to build solid customer experience.
Why? — The customer experience is the common denominator in all of them, while we can differentiate amongst different businesses our customer is always holding a sample benchmark in her to measure her relative convenience.
Service parity can be used here to compare and benchmark businesses to maintain a parity between her best experiences. While traditional benchmarking will always remain a tool to optimize the performance within an industry when it comes to semi-core and support value propositions that are provided across industries, maintaining a parity becomes essential. Whether we want it or not banks will be compared to e-retailers in customer support and railway platforms to our favorite restaurant in queue management. Once we experience the best, we will always make it a benchmark consciously or unconsciously.
What is the effect of this? -We are already watching a slew of businesses specializing in these kinds of services, making it their core. An advantage will turn into an entry barrier.
So, what is novel in this idea? -The possibility to look in the existing structure and create new white spaces.
Is it the only way to look? -Certainly no, we are already looking at businesses that are functioning profitably without making use of this Service Parity.
So? Why a new jargon? -We were walking peacefully on the earth and eating apples long before we understood the gravity and long after that it let us fly. Not to exaggerate and compare it with science but models are not novel on times they are superfluous but what is novel in them is our somewhat desperate attempt to fly. It started with the first bite Adam took the joy of understanding, making rain rather than worshipping the unknown. Pushing the wheel just a bit farther. An experience to be devoid of all experiences. That is where we want to be. Blurring the division between Target group and Individual experience. Isn’t it so?
Now those of you who want to get away from all these rantings and enjoy a little music. The desert travelers are here, we all remember the famous Hotel California, right? Well, they were the first who experienced huge service disparity. So let us forget the craft and relive their utter inconvenience.
‘Welcome to the Hotel California,
such a lovely place,
such a lovely face”
Isn’t it?
