ath Power Consulting and Capital One Bank Lead Workshop At 2011 Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium
Boston, MA [March 13, 2011] -- The Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium recently gathered senior banking executives in Miami, March 13-15, to explore pressing regulatory topics and the latest best practices in retail banking. Frank Aloi, President and CEO of ath Power Consulting, alongside Nick Koumentakos, SVP Sales & Service at Capital One Bank, lead a conference workshop at the event on how to "Differentiate Your Institution Through Heightened Customer Experience." The speakers addressed how the implementation of specific customer experience best practices and the consistent execution of a well-defined strategy will drive the successful institutions following the financial crisis and new regulatory reforms.
According to Mr. Aloi, "The financial services organizations that focus on implementing new best practices and strategies to improve customer experience, increase loyalty and successfully differentiate themselves in the marketplace will lead the industry."
ath Power Consulting, a leader in financial services customer experience research, also unveiled the results of its 2011 Ideal Banking Study™ during the session. Overall, the study showed that there is still significant room for improvement in crucial customer experience categories – those of which can ultimately impact customer loyalty and profitability. Problem resolution still remains a huge hurdle for banks and reward programs still have a great deal of unmet potential for customer engagement. Most importantly, the results showed that the strongest drivers of customer advocacy lie with the customer service experience – not rates, fees and general convenience factors.
"Many organizations continue to focus their efforts more on products and less on customer relationships as a way to recoup lost fees from recent regulatory reform," states Aloi, "While adding new products or increasing rates or fees for existing products may seem like an instant solution to increase profitability, these initiatives do not help improve customer loyalty and can often have a negative impact on customer retention."
Mr. Koumentakos expanded on that notion by stating, "The key to driving profitability and improving customer loyalty is to find a happy medium between having a service-driven and a product-driven culture." He further enlightened the audience by sharing some best practices Capital One Bank utilizes to differentiate their organization from the competition. According to ath Power research in both retail and small business banking sectors, Capital One Bank has ranked at the top in customer experience for the past two years.
About ath Power Consulting
ath Power is a premier provider of customer experience solutions for the financial services industry, offering audit and mystery shop studies, surveys, market research, employee development and strategic brand planning. ath Power owns the largest database of financial services field representatives in the nation, and executes the largest number of proprietary banking audits in the industry. ath Power delivers increased sales results and heightened customer service ‐‐ the cornerstones of differentiation in a crowded marketplace. For more information, please visit www.athpower.com.
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Media Contact:
Jessica Hamel
ath Power Consulting
978-474-6464 Ext. 107
jhamel@athpower.com
