The Value of Personalised Service

I recently experienced an incredible shock. I received personalised service from an unexpected source.

I'm a big believer in personalised service. Having sold and marketed customer relationship management (CRM) systems for many years I had the opportunity to discuss, theorize, and plan approaches to good personalisation in lots of different businesses. I could advise companies on how to manufacturer relationships and simulate a personal experience based on a massive collection of amalgamated and analyses data.

The fact is though that the best sorts of personalisation are personal. No surprise there.

I get lots of great personal service here in my village. I visit the butcher, bakery, convenience store, hairdresser, dentist, and dry cleaner with some regularity. They know my name, have a shared history with me, and can anticipate my needs. It's a relationship.

Pity the banks today. Big organizations with centralized call centres. No one visits the branch anymore. How do you build a relationship and keep it personal? And really, does it matter?

Well, that shock I mentioned earlier came from a bank. More specifically the Coastal Community Credit Union on Vancouver Island. I received a hand written note about my mortgage renewal. The envelope was hand written and hand stamped. The note included our first names. The writing was even elegant and easy to read.

Now CCCU isn't exactly the world's largest bank and they do pride themselves (in their marketing) on the level of service they provide to their members. While there is clearly a process behind this that identifies targets, pulls the details, and hands them to someone with legible writing, I think that this works for them for a couple of reasons.
- they are a smallish company with a limited number of customers
- they pride themselves publicly on their service levels
- they still have a pretty strong branch model so do actually touch customers

If I received a similar note from one of the big high street banks, I'd be pretty cynical about it because I'd know about the huge number of people they'd have writing things out verbatim in an office in Bangalore 6 Months ahead.

So does personalised service have a place in a large automated business? Absolutely, but only if it's in context. Otherwise it's just lipstick on a pig.