Banks placing emphasis on sales skills of branch employees, but need more focus on employee knowledge and understanding customer needs

CALABASAS, CALIFORNIA (September 1, 2004) Informa Research Services, Inc. – today released findings from their Informa Research Services Customer Service Index, a normative database reporting on banker sales and service performance.

“Informa Research Services provides the financial industry with information designed to help banks improve their sales, service, and margins,“ said Paul Lubin, senior vice president at Informa Research Services, Inc.  “The following findings are the results of bank employee performance from over 7,000 mystery shops, from 20 institutions across the nation.”

Audits of bank representatives’ sales and service performance show cross-selling, asking for the business, and offering help with future needs has improved sharply:

                                               2000              2002             2004

Cross-selling                            44%               50%             61%

Asked for business                   47%               71%             72%

Help with future needs               57%               69%             74%

Performance on softer issues related to customer relations has also improved:

                                               2000              2002             2004

Introduced self                          58%               62%             68%

Ask for name                           64%               71%             73%

Shake hands                            55%               54%             68%

At the same time banker discovery skills (questioning) and product knowledge have declined:

Discovery

Amount of money                     76%               73%             66%

Verified needs                          59%               52%             55%

Product Knowledge

Suggested product                   88%               83%             76%

Mentioned features/ benefits      93%               94%             87%

“While bankers are placing more emphasis on improving the sales skills of branch employees, more focus should be placed on employee product knowledge and understanding customer needs,” said Lubin.   “Banks that ensure employees discuss products based on customer needs are more likely to build long-term customer satisfaction and customer retention.”

More information on the mystery shop services and Informa Research Services Customer Service Index are available upon request.


About Informa Research Services, Inc.

(www.informars.com)

Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Calabasas, CA, Informa Research Services, Inc., provides the financial industry's most extensive array of market research and decision-support information.

Conducting daily surveys of the retail, lending, and business products offered by more than 10,000 financial organizations nationwide, Informa currently supports the product pricing decisions of more than 3,000 clients, representing all 50 states, and including the top 25 financial institutions.  Informa is the premier provider of fee and feature studies, used to determine the competitiveness of fee-based services, as well as in-depth studies on cash management services, trust products, and other specialized services.  Informa conducts the finest mystery shopping and market research studies available that deliver accurate and relevant measurements in the areas of employee sales and service, customer satisfaction, closed account research, focus groups, competitive performance, and compliance testing.  The company’s extensive financial product database is a popular source of licensed editorial content for financial portals, websites, newspapers, and magazines, attracting major Internet partners, including Yahoo! Finance, Quicken, CNN.com, ABC, MSN, MyFico.com, Edmunds.com, and Internet Broadcasting Systems