Trust your bank?

brimuzzy

Hi MSE,

I am a designer and working in improving the touchpoints we have with our banks in an MBA student competition. One issue I have come across in customer interviews is trust.

What is it about banks that make you trust them less, or trust them more? I would appreciate your views.

The goal is not be be disengenuous. Trust has to be earned, it cannot be created. But our competition team is keen to advice our client on how it can improve the services it offers people through the various touchpoints to make people manage their money better.

So, please let me know you views on trust. What turns you on and what turns you off about the trust relationship with your bank?

In addition, in a trusting relationship, what sort of things can a bank then do for you to help you be smarter with money? E.G. show you where you are spending your money like the MINT service does?

Thanks in advance,

Brian

InsideInsurance

From my perspective there are many issues which breaks peoples trust in banks and to list a few:

1) Failure to do what they say they are going to
2) Being there for you in the good times but immediately abandoning you in the bad
3) Claim to have your best interests and then sell you poor/ overpriced products
4) Hidden charges - eg commission free foreign exchange where commission is just hidden in the rate
5) No one ever accepts ownership in the bank, its always someone else you need to speak to deal with etc

There are a host of possible things that can be done to assist customers but there is often balancing acts done between cost, security, technology (have to remember most banks have fairly archaic systems), customer uptake and customer appetite for change.

One of the challenges for banks however is the diversity of the customer base. There is little real customer segmentation in the banking sector (or at least from what I can see) with almost all banks trying to appeal to all customers. The only possible exceptions are the few non-high street offerings (eg First Direct). Thus trying to create something that will appeal to everyone is always going to be much more difficult than narrowing down your proposition so you can target your customers.