Banks Have A Gen Y Blind Spot

Let’s face it, large banks aren’t generally easy to do business with. In a recent Forrester Research report called “Consumers Don’t Enjoy Financial Services,”I examined survey responses from about 5,000 consumers who told us what they thought about their bank. Here are some tidbits from that research:

• 35% of consumers fall into a segment that we call “at-risk” because of their low level of enjoyment with their bank. Compared to other segments these ”at-risk” consumers are the youngest and have the highest income.
• Young females (Gen X and Gen Y) report the most problems with their banks

Banks know they have a problem. In a previous post called “Banks Prepare For Customer Experience Wars” I discussed a survey of banking execs that I did with American Banker. In that survey we found that:

• 97% of banking execs think that customer experience is very important or critical
• Most say that they aren’t meeting customers’ needs – especially online, where less than one-third of respondents gave their bank’s interactions a vote of confidence.

Hmmmmm. Doesn’t take a PhD to figure out that banks have a customer experience problem — especially with younger consumers.

Given that Gen Yers are really a different beast from older consumers (take a look at my presentation on Gen Yers within this post: A View Of Forrester’s Consumer Forum October), banks will need to focus explicitly on this younger segment.

The bottom line: FWIW, IMO b8nks need better Gen Y strats. HTH