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Banks have recently been under attack as never before. Courting popularity the Government has waded in with legislation and ‘fat cat bashing’ but interestingly recent research suggests that the vast majority of personal customers are satisfied with the service they receive.

Nonetheless, a number of new entrants are getting ready to enter the market or expand their current activity such as Tesco and Virgin.

The commentary which follows was written some time ago but still resonates. Further research is being carried out on the current environment.

We believe that the key challenge banks currently face is that there is no emotional engagement between customers and staff. Why is it that banks have failed to create a meaningful retail experience despite the considerable investment in brand makeovers and premises facelifts?

Generally banks recognise the vital role frontline staff play and the need to make their job easier with the right technology and well constructed and well communicated products – hero products for hero staff as one bank used to describe it. From a sales perspective, most banks have found that a short sharp campaign burst supported by attractive incentives works best.

But in our view there has been little attempt to deal with the issues of service, the customer experience and identity holistically. What we see is a push strategy from the centre. There is an institutional ‘Big Brother’ environment dominated by rules, regulations and processes which allow no room for effective ownership of problems, entrepreneurial behaviour of personality, The outcome is not customer or people (i.e. staff) centric.

Having worked in and with retail banks for many years on sales and service issues, we believe that was has been overlooked is the need for a set of unifying values and beliefs that create a positive emotional framework within which customer interactions and relationships can take place. After all, the underlying business model of ‘buy it cheap sell it high’ is not rocket science is it?

We have found when talking to staff and management that there is a strong commitment and enthusiasm for having a coherent Bank personality – which includes values and beliefs – but little understanding of what they might be and how they might be broadcast authentically and embedded in the organisation.

We believe that they key to a differentiated Bank proposition is an identity/personality which is consistently recognisable and executed and well understood by customers and staff alike. The identity must resonate in every point of customer contact with a rock solid congruence between:

The desired changes in behaviours and attitudes will be achieved only through a sense of shared values and a common identity. Staff will only identify with a common mission if it allows for a range of values, diverse behaviours and styles of working. People need to retain their own identity to participate fully in creating and delivering an authentic bank identity.

A key message from our experience is that even senior staff is unclear about their role developing and maintaining the cultural values of the bank. They don’t know whether their core beliefs – about customers, the business model and the bank’s approach – are consistent with those of the people above or below them. Almost all the people we speak to say that they would like to know what the shared values are.

The most successful organisations are those where employees are aligned to a common purpose with shared beliefs and values. In many US companies, for example, this si because the founder or his family are still close to the business. Without this form of intimacy and engagement, a compelling substitute proxy needs to be created.

Unfortunately, prescribing behaviour is often not sustainable because it does not connect with intrinsic values and identity. Where staff feel a dissonance between the required behaviours and their core beliefs then they will disconnect – just look at how differently many people behave at work as opposed to at home.

A Bank’s task is to communicate and demonstrate that the relationship behaviours it seeks are consonant with the individual’s beliefs and values. More importantly, there is the opportunity to re-inforce their alignment with the Bank’s goals by confirming that their sense of identity is enhanced not diminished. This we believe is a critical missing link between banks and their retail customers today.