Personal needs assessment a tool to build the relationship.

• Author: Triplett, Ted
• Position: Customer Retention

The he account opening process is a perfect time to identify new customer needs because customers:

* Expect to spend time at the bank establishing their new account.

* Expect to be asked about and are more open to sharing personal information when opening a new account.

* Generally open new accounts in person, thus providing the best opportunity to identity their financial needs.

However, in a recent study, retail executives admitted that many frontline staff lack the sales skills required to conduct credible conversations with new customers to identify their financial needs.

To help overcome that lack of frontline execution, banks need to develop a mechanism they can use to learn about their customers' life cycle. 1 propose a "personal needs assessment" (PNA), a tool to gather valuable information that can build the bank/customer relationship. To understand its potential benefit in the on-boarding process, one has to look at what banks are doing now.

Many banks, for example, send out mail pieces under a ''Welcome to Our Bank" banner, usually a product-focused brochure. Some may not even bother with the welcome message and simply start cross-selling. As a result, customers get bombarded with irrelevant, noncustomized offers.

These off-the-mark messages display a lack of knowledge about the customer--leaving the customer to infer that the bank's real concern is generating sales rather than building a relationship. Research indicates this is one reason why new customers inevitably disregard the majority of a bank's correspondence.

Simply sending generic offers driven by data or senior management, on a predetermined time line, risks alienating the new customer for two important reasons: Lack of relevance. Customers are annoyed to receive what they consider mass solicitations--offers that don't apply to them...