Be who you appear to be.

Thanks to Tom Asaker for this post from his weblog about a BearingPoint, Inc. study of the state of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the financial services industry.

From the study:

Among the survey findings is that fewer than a quarter of the executives interviewed said their customers promote their financial institution enthusiastically to family and friends. After spending more than $20 billion in 2002 alone on CRM systems to help them get closer to customers, financial institutions still yearn for the brand loyalty and rich relationships enjoyed by carmakers and clothiers. Why do people not feel as attached to the place they entrust with their money as they do to the vehicle in the garage or the jeans in the closet? The answer is not that CRM technology has failed. CRM has put powerful tools in the hands of the enterprise—new processes, integrated systems and rich stores of information—that improve service and take out costs. The problem, rather, is that these huge investments have focused not on building a bond with the customer and enhancing the customer experience, but on deploying technology to manage the customer relationship.

The study advocates a focus on "CEM" or Customer Experience Management, and gives three keys to implementing it in the financial services industry:

Adopt the customer’s perspective. By putting themselves in their customers’ shoes, financial services executives will avoid mistaking customer inertia for loyalty and forbearance for acceptance. They can then identify more easily what their institutions must do to win and keep customers and to inject more enthusiasm into their relationships.
Create mutual value. For many firms, customer strategy has long hinged on maximizing marketing effectiveness to increase sales. Financial services companies need to commit to creating value for customers at each point of interaction, rather than merely to operational excellence or fiduciary duty.
Guarantee transparency and trust. Financial services providers must build a comprehensive picture of customers that matches the picture customers have of themselves, and then organize their business and technology architectures to match. Only then can they reward customers for the totality of their relationships, provide a consistent and integrated experience across multiple points of contact, and infuse much needed transparency into relationships that many customers currently suspect are one-sided.

Some great stuff here. Registration necessary to read the study.