Citibank And JPMorgan Chase Face Customer Experience Crossroads
September 27, 2008 3 Comments
It’s been quite a week in the banking industry. Washington Mutual was sold to JPMorgan Chase and there’s talk of Wachovia merging with Citibank. From a customer experience perspective, it doesn’t look good. Why not?
In Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, we ranked 14 banks. The bottom 2 on the list were Citibank and JPMorgan Chase. Wachovia was fourth and Washington Mutual was eighth. If we assume that the acquiring company will set the prevailing tone, then that’s a big loss for customer experience. Making matters worse, the integration of large organizations tends to make people become very internally focussed as they try to merge systems, products, organizations, and processes.
My take: The advice that I gave in my previous post called Two Words For Vikram Pandit (Citigroup CEO): “Customer Experience” is even more important than ever, for both Vikram Pandit and Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase CEO). Since we know that customer experience highly correlates to loyalty in banking, these CEOs should make customer experience a key tenet of the integration. Without a keen focus in this area, customer experience will likely get worse.
The CEOs shouldn’t just push for minimal customer disruptions, I’d like to see them strive for customer experience excellence. But this type of bold move will take leadership. It will take an ongoing commitment from the CEOs to maintain the focus on customer experience, and very strong Chief Customer Officers to chart and guide the transformation.
Both big banks will need to go through the five stages of maturity that I defined in my research on the customer experience journey:
The bottom line: Only strong leadership can convert customer experience from a liability to an asset.
About Bruce Temkin
FYI, it is Jamie DIMON
Anne: Good catch, thanks. I spelled it right in one place and then got sloppy in another. But it’s fixed now. Sorry Jamie.
I totally agree on the importance of putting the customer experience first. WaMu’s retail bank may be only slightly less toxic than the mortgage side of the business. Customers have complained bitterly on ConsumerAffairs.com about WaMu’s banking practices. Jamie Dimon will have to change more than the name on the outside of the branches – policies, procedures, systems, and personnel all have to be overhauled to put the customer first and regain the trust that WaMu has systematically squandered.