A successful bank turns each employee into a problem solver for customers, as well a keen observer of the bottom line.
Phelps County Bank's prices are high, its product line is not the most extensive, and yet it dominates its market. The secret? Turning each employee into a problem solver for customers -- and into a keen observer of the bottom line
The other day my bank sent me its catalog. I am not making this up. It was a glossy, full-color booklet trumpeting all the "products" (as the banking industry likes to say) and services I could sign up for: Home-equity credit. International personal banking. Mutual funds. On and on for nearly 60 pages. Little yellow sunbursts ("New!" "Special value!") left the impression that I could probably get it all at a bargain -- and that I'd better send in my order right away.
I have a modest suggestion for the people who run my bank, in case they ever ask me, which they haven't.
Folks, forget the glitz. Forget all the different kinds of accounts (four checking, two savings, five "packages") you describe in your catalog. Nobody can tell them apart anyway. Trash the little yellow sunbursts. Trash all the other marketing hype. Instead, take better care of me and all the other customers.
As things stand, I'm likely to go into my branch and find a line six deep, one teller window open, and two other tellers chatting behind "Next Window Please" signs. If I phone for information about refinancing my mortgage, I'm lucky to get a call back a week later. My friend Peggy patronizes the same bank and one day brought in a check for 200 English pounds. The hapless teller first asked what a pound was. Then -- because there was no key for pound on her keypad -- she grumpily asked Peggy if she could just record it as 200 dollars. I remember when people used to refer to their banker, as in, "I'll ask my banker about that." Peggy and I don't have a banker. We have a marketing organization staffed by people who don't know one kind of currency from another.
In light of all that, what I'd like to do is pick up Phelps County Bank, an institution currently headquartered in Rolla, Mo., and move it, intact, to my hometown. Then I could do business with the friendliest, most service-oriented bank I've ever seen. I know, this plan may not be entirely realistic. So I'd at least like other bankers -- and other businesspeople -- to understand how PCB, as it's known, takes care of its customers, and to see how that approach has brought the little bank startling growth and prosperity, and to appreciate the fact that PCB's two chief competitors, both affiliated with big bank holding companies and bearing those holding companies' well-known names, have dropped to number two and number three in town while PCB has taken over as top banana.
As they say, there's a lesson here. Maybe a lot of lessons, because it turns out that PCB chief executive Emma Lou Brent had to build a different kind of company before her bank was capable of delivering the level of service that has made it so successful.
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Rolla, Mo., sits in the foothills of the Ozarks, a two-hour drive from St. Louis southwest along Interstate 44. It's a modest-size community, pure middle America, set apart from a thousand similar towns only by its lovely surroundings and a University of Missouri campus. Its economy isn't exactly booming, but neither is it depressed. There's a little farming. The university generates some business, as does a modest stream of tourists and retirees. The bank's catchment area -- including Rolla, the neighboring town of St. James, and the surrounding countryside -- is home to some 35,000. PCB's main office sits on the corner of Eighth and Pine streets, downtown. The building was once a hotel, though by the time the bank was founded, in 1963, it had degenerated into a flophouse. Today it has been reborn, with plush carpets and dark wooden paneling, as befits a thriving financial institution. Thirty-six of PCB's 55 employees work here. The rest staff three other facilities: a branch in St. James, a drive-in bank on the outskirts of Rolla, and a tiny office on the university campus.
The service on which the bank stakes both its reputation and its bottom line makes itself felt in a dozen different ways, routine and not so routine.
The lobby opens five minutes before 9 a.m. and closes five minutes after 3 p.m. -- there are no disgruntled customers peering in and looking angrily at their watches. If people knock on the door after closing, customer-service reps have been trained to invite them into a secure room and ask how they can help. Reps have the authority to resolve most customers' complaints on the spot. Mr. Jones is upset because he lost track of his checkbook balance and now doesn't want to pay the overdraft charge? A rep like Patti Douglas might refund the amount if she thinks it was an honest mistake. Or she might propose splitting it with him.
At the windows, Melanie Boyda and other tellers learn basics that escape tellers at banks like mine. "When you hear the door open, look up," recites Boyda. "If you see somebody looking around, lost, help them. Acknowledge customers. Let them know you know they're there." Tellers, too, can resolve many customer complaints -- unless there's a line, in which case they refer them to a customer-service rep. PCB's customer-service creed, displayed on easels in the lobbies and the loan department, reminds tellers (and everyone else) of their commitments. No keeping customers waiting while you finish paperwork. No using "the computer" or "policy" as a reason for not doing something.
In the loan department, lending officers typically sit down with prospective borrowers for most of an hour, just to get to know them, before even beginning on the loan application. The bank's newspaper ads carry lending officers' home phone numbers, as do the officers' business cards. Customers are encouraged to call nights or weekends on urgent matters. House calls of that sort go in both directions. The day I visit, Adolph Mueller at the St. James branch reports closing a recent $150,000 loan -- in the evening, at the customers' home. "They both work, and they have three children," explains Mueller matter-of-factly. "So it's a convenience for them."
Service is partly a matter of systems, and PCB monitors its service by sending surveys to new borrowers (after three months) and customers opening new accounts (after six). The surveys alert the bank to bottlenecks ("Would you say that the waiting time, if any, at the bank is acceptable?") and to unmet customer needs (an automated teller machine at the drive-in facility). Service is also a matter of innovation, and PCB employees are forever coming up with new ideas. Patti Douglas, the customer-service rep, has developed a detailed proposal for a program aimed at seniors. Peggy Laun, an assistant in the loan department, has been investigating the possibility of offering electronic tax filing.
