Checklist Item 2: Focus innovatively on each customer

If you really think about it, the goal of any innovation is to better fulfil an existing need. Thus, banking innovation must keep pace with customers’ evolving aspirations. Pick a random sample of customers and chances are that you will find more uniqueness than commonality of need. More importantly, seasoned customers expect their banks to fulfil their individual requirements. Fail on that count and they will take their business to one that will. Clearly, the banking business has no choice but to go customer-specific. Once again, innovation can show the way. Banks must leverage the vast customer information at their disposal, especially that of a tacit nature, to refine their understanding of individual customers. This insight must underlie a new, innovative segmentation strategy that takes into account customers’ aspirations, demographic characteristics and usage preferences besides the size of their bank balance. Once they’ve perfected their segmentation strategy, banks can use it to optimise a product-channel-pricing mix for each customer. (More about this in subsequent posts.)

Channel innovation can also add teeth to this personalisation drive. For instance, users could be allowed to customise their internet banking pages to a certain extent. Web 2.0 platforms can allow bank representatives to interact with customers one to one and give them their undivided attention.

Who says the segment-of-one is a distant dream?!

Also read:
Checklist Item 1: Let customer interest drive innovation