I Have A Dream! (of the perfect CRM System for the banking industry)

by Ralph Harrison

After spending the past 25 years validating the fact that the phrase "bank marketing" is the perfect oxymoron, I have reached the conclusion that it's easier to teach customers to buy than to teach bankers to sell. And I can prove it!

I have a dream of the future of banking and the "Perfect CRM System" to lead this marketing-deficient industry out of its self-created cultural wilderness, and into a shining 21st Century world of financial service where "customer need" finally takes precedence over "banker wishful thinking." A customer-driven marketing system that gives every customer a valid and lasting reason to be loyal to one financial service store for a lifetime.

So what does my perfect CRM System look like? And how does its little beauty work? Well before we pull off the security cover, take a look under the hood and kick the tires, let's get one thing straight. My new marketing car is customer-driven, not banker-driven like all the others on the road today - which simply means that it's powered by "customer buying" rather that "banker selling." (Trust me. It works much better this way.) It's all based on a fast-evolving marketing methodology known as CMR or Customer-Managed Relationship (rather than CRM) Banking, wherein the customer does the driving and most of the work, and the bank provides the easy-to-follow, common-sense road map, and customer performance incentives along the highway to greater satisfaction and lifetime relationships.

My Perfect CMR Banking System is the first low-cost, low-risk system to enter the 21st Century Race. It's easy to understand and fueled by the simple and equitable marketing promise, "the greater your loyalty to my bank, the greater your buying power and recognition at my bank," aka "loyalty pricing." A fair and logical promise that recognizes and rewards lifetime customer loyalty (and penalizes disloyalty) . . . providing the cost-efficient answer to motivating all customers to a higher level of performance while eliminating the waste and inefficiencies of traditional database marketing and CRM methodologies that target only my profitable customers and ignore the other 70% to 80% of my family that fall into the unprofitable to marginal mass. A system that engages every customer in my marketing promise for a lifetime, and delivers the ultimate prize in all of marketing. Lifetime Retention.

And yes, my Perfect CRM Banking System is customized to my bank with separate programs for my retail and commercial customers. It even provides an application to measure the loyalty of each of my officers and employees, and comes with a reports package that allows me to scope and query the lifetime performance of my entire customer family from a new perspective?their lifetime loyalty and contribution to the success of my bank.

Loyalty to my bank (recognizing that customer loyalty equates with and may even exceed the tunnel-visioned benefit of customer profitability) can be focused on the performance of segments that include my officers and directors, employees, shareholders, and regular banking customers - with the added ability to track brokerage and insurance relationships with my affiliate entities, and other value-added relationships with strategic partners.

My Perfect CMR Banking System also creates a customer-driven sales environment that motivates my customers to consolidate all their missing relationships with my bank; buy their future relationships from my bank; recommend my bank to their family and friends . . . and finally, stay with me for a lifetime. (A customer-managed marketing system that delivers the integrated powers of consolidation, growth, referral, and retention!)

It's all I could ever ask for in a marketing system that capitalizes on the support of 21st Century technology and the incredible delivery powers of the Internet to migrate my customers from costly off-line banking over to cost-efficient on-line service, including the accelerated use of my internet banking service.

And here's the best part! I awake from my dream to find that this Perfect CMR System is no longer just a dream. It will soon arrive on the market with perfect timing to cost-efficiently transform "bank marketing" from the oxymoron of the past to the bank marketing success story of the 21st Century. Wow! What a dream!

Ralph Harrison is Managing Director of The Harrison Company, Aurora, CO, developer of the recently patented Loyalty Banking System and the Harrison Marketing Library, the only bank marketing library for the Internet and CD-ROM. Harrison has 25 years of marketing consulting experience in serving the banking and financial services industry with the past 15 years dedicated to building intellectual capital in the discipline of "customer-driven" loyalty-based marketing. He may be contacted through his web site at www.harrisoncompany.net or directly at ralph@harrisoncompany.net.

First published on BankersOnline.com 6/10/02