BAI Online

Deborah L. Bianucci President and CEO, BAI

BAI Focuses on Customer and Employee Research

What will it take for consumer deposit and loan growth in 2006? Many experts expect this to be a year for banks to focus more on building organic growth strategies, rather than relying as much on acquisitions. Many organizations directly link the achievement of growth objectives to effectively managing customer satisfaction levels and increasing retention rates.

The March/April 2006 BAI Banking Strategies presents an analysis of customer satisfaction and commitment by J.D. Power and Associates, the global marketing information firm. This is the first release of the J.D. Power results in financial services by the firm known to many for the same type of analysis in other industries.

For several years, BAI has focused on retail growth strategies, studying the impact of customer relationships on results. BAI also conducts its own research. In the November/December 2005 issue of BAI Banking Strategies, we presented highlights from BAI's research of consumers and front line employees called The Front Line Experience. The Front Line Experience, in turn, built upon BAI's 2004 survey of financial services executives, The Front Line Factor.

BAI also conducts extensive benchmarking research that provide financial services companies with in-depth information and comprehensive metrics designed to help them better understand their competitive strengths, serve their customers and achieve their business goals. These programs, which are focused on all aspects of consumer and small business deposit performance, show companies where they rank against industry norms and suggest how they can improve their performance in a variety of categories. All clients participate on a confidential basis so their individual data is not released publicly or compared to other specific organizations.

BAI has two decades of experience in the employee research field, enabling BAI to generate a robust, industry-specific normative database. Using this data, we can identify the factors in an institution's environment that foster the kinds of attitudes, motivations and behaviors that lead to quality interactions with customers. Our benchmarking comparisons then show organizations which of their employee-related incentives are working, which need retooling, and how they can measure progress over time. Understanding what drives employee engagement - and motivates employees to be customer-focused - can make a major difference in how well financial institutions perform in the marketplace. For more information, please see our white paper Targeting Bank Improvement through Employee Data.

The retail and small business performance benchmarking programs are of more recent vintage. These, too, are based on detailed industry-wide data, including more than 70 metrics to analyze how a bank is acquiring, expanding and retaining customers. This allows us to produce a diagnostic scorecard on the organization, which is then compared with peer group norms. Each financial institution's management team can then feed this data into its ongoing decision-making process in order to improve operational performance.

Programs such as these underscore BAI's commitment to improve individual and organizational performance by connecting people and information. All of our research furthers this purpose by providing financial services companies with the tools to make more informed decisions.

Looking for an integrated training solution?

Give your employees access to premier training content via the Internet, CD-ROM, VHS video or print. Through its recent acquisition of Bankers Training Consulting Company, BAI now offers more than 400 programs covering a wide variety of topics including compliance, teller/frontline, lending, security & fraud, management, computer skills and more. Visit www.bai.org/training/info.

BAI’s 2006 Budget Planner is designed to help you easily build and plan your conference and seminar attendance (see www.bai.org/planner/bs).

Researching solution providers?

You’ll find close to 600 companies in 55 categories in the BAI Resource Directory. Go to www.bai.org/resource and find solutions for ATMs, Check Imaging, Core Systems, Marketing, Regulatory Reporting, Smart Cards, Training, Transaction Processing, Wholesale, Corporate & Government Banking and more.