Back to the future.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: Marketing Solutions - Brief Article

Not only the sentimental have been seized by the urge to turn back the clock to a time when things were simpler, safer and more reliable. The same urge is sweeping much of the business world.

The impulse makes sense. Turning back is tempting when the course gets rocky, the outcomes disillusioning and the risks intimidating.

Which sounds familiar to most of us today, especially large banks: Technology expenditures that mortgaged the customer relationships they were meant to enrich. Accounting trickery that made revenue out of buried losses. Mergers and acquisitions that glossed over the failure to earn revenue from existing customers. Mistakes about the nature of the real promise of the wired (or newly unwired) world.

Community banks are doing relatively well

For large banks, the disillusionment is compounded by the apparent immunity of the community banks, where deposits are up, customer satisfaction is up, profits are up. Small banks spent proportionately less and are showing disproportionate success.

So it is not surprising that many large banks are casting longing glances backward at what they used to do better.

* "We used to know how to give great service, but it looks like we have forgotten how. We need to go back to better training in service."

* "We thought our website would differentiate us, but it doesn't look like customers see it that way. While we were helping them self-serve, we lost touch with them. We need to get it back."

* "We thought that cutting into branch expense would pay off in terms of being the low-cost provider. Turns out that isn't what customers wanted, so now we are renewing our commitment to the branch."

There is a catch. You cannot go home again. You cannot go back and touch the same water in the river, because that river has flowed on.

Take the main "river" many are nostalgic for: service.

Delivering good service was never easy, but it is infinitely more demanding in this century. Now you are expected to have information at the...