> Here's the thing: retail banking margin is actually quite low and customer support is expensive. If you are someone who routinely calls your bank then your long-term value (LTV) is going to take a huge hit, so, of course banks want to keep everything as "low-touch" as possible.

Here’s the thing: this statement un-ironically embodies everything wrong behind the article.

1. “If you” — where you are the provider of capital the bank makes money from, or interest payments the bank makes money from, or fees the bank makes money from, i.e., the source of the bank’s revenue

2. “are someone” — victim blaming

3. “who routinely calls” — aka, who experiences so much friction in trying to accomplish routine banking tasks, they are willing to endure the abuse of the bank’s “customer support”; aka, who is willing to be the canary in the coal mine about abjectly terrible process; aka, the gift of customer feedback with willingness to get to the bottom of the issue, such as, why does this issue exist, and/or, why does this issue cause a call, and what can be done to ensure the next time the customer either (a) doesn’t experience it, or (b) can resolve it themselves in an obvious way less painful than calling in.

3. “then your LTV is going to take a huge hit” — no, your (the customer’s) LTV didn’t change, the bank is unable to service you effectively. Your value for revenue generation is the same. The bank’s inability to service you lowers their RoE, or return on equity.

And …

> thrawaybanksup (18 hrs ago) - Disclaimer: I work in a bank and have worked closely with the customer support team.

4. Not throwaway bank CTO, not disclaiming but disclosing: I spent ~5 yrs as CTO for Americas at the 2nd largest bank in the free world, trying to help it grasp what I’m sharing here. Worked closely with not just the customer support team, but all teams. From what I observed, I’d suggest your post exemplifies almost the entire banking industry’s fundamental misunderstanding of how to enable customer success in ways that drive bank success.

So here’s the actual thing:

In general, “support” is called for in the face of in-ability, and it’s the bank that is failing to provide that ability, even in the case of a senior checking their balance.

(ASIDE: You say “works closely with” the support team. Could be you’re with tech, could be product, could be a number of groups — regardless, the framing is that of customer service as cost center. So this post is addressing the customer service team or role. Moving on…)

Reframe everything you wrote imagining, for a moment, that customer success was a legitimate goal, and you may be able to hear how tone deaf support-as-cost-center is:

5. “Customer support is embarrassingly outsourceable” — Rephrase as “customer success is embarrassingly outsourceable” … Suddenly that doesn’t sound right, does it?

That sounds like someone somewhere isn’t doing a job.

For instance, since winning product management involves customer journey, customer experience, and reducing friction, why is “customer support” considered a cost center ripe for cost avoidance, and not signal priority one for product development?

L1, L2, L3, L4 — no product team in there anywhere, as if the errors are a technology team issue rather than a product usability fail!

Ouch.

Banking is still run by a vast “frozen middle” of management whose jobs depend on a flat refusal to accept any of the above.

In the rare example such as the bank called “Simple” which initially got it better, the few who figured that out will get gobbled up by a bigger bank that doesn’t get it seeking growth or returns or technology, folded into the larger bank’s operations, thereby destroying the difference never recognized — actually rejected — by a majority of the acquirer’s middle or even senior management team.

Sorry, @thrawaybanksup, you cannot outsource customer success. It’s a way of thinking, not middle or back office, or operations, or support. The bank in the customer’s experience, in the customer’s head, is the reality. It’s the bank that succeeds or fails.

Fight to elevate the support team’s role to help “solve the problem at the left”, a tight feedback loop prioritizing work where the product decisions are made, so terrible customer experience doesn’t get shoveled out back to bury a disempowered call agent, it lands on those responsible for the experience.

Help “Management” grasp the surprisingly effective concept that “support” redefined as “success” both improves margins and reduces support expense when driving simplifying the experience.

2. (again) “If you are someone who routinely calls your bank…” — No. Just no. Instead: If you are a bank which gets routinely called! …

This is all on the bank.