Dharmesh Mistry

Newbury

CTO

It's not surprising "CRM" is failing banks. The focus on CRM spend has been on sales not service. CRM and Business Intelligence investments have been huge, and all focused on analysing customer data for targetted cross sell opportunities.

Spend in the name of CRM has had very little to do with Service, it's all sell sell sell ! Now that the big 5 banks have little opportunity for further growth by acquisition in the UK, the focus is on getting more out of existing customers.

Policies to "buy new customers" only attract "price chasers", so when better rates are available these people move and the bank is caught chasing their tails again.

The focus for differentiation and customer retention therefore has to be service improvments......which this space, I expect many will make more investment in this area in the next few years !