In the last few weeks I have heard several banks mention the idea of attending a session with or bringing in experts from Ritz Carlton to provide a training program (of up to six hours!). Their courses focus on leadership, service, passion, exceeding expectations, and other qualities that most customers view banks as lacking. But, for many banks, bringing in Ritz Carlton for a day serves only as a “feel good” program that allows managers to believe that they are doing something transformative when, in fact, they are in most cases just checking off another training box.

 

Do not get me wrong. I like Ritz Carlton. Their service is great. Service and customer care serve as a major part of the hotel’s core philosophy. I know no one, including me, who has ever had a bad experience there. But, remember when JC Penney hired the exec who developed the Apple stores. That was viewed as a transformative event, something that would lift that crummy store to the heights of Bergdorf. He is gone now with the strategy he introduced. The fact is that JC Penney can never provide the Apple store experience, and banks have fundamental issues to address before they can hope their customers view them with the same positive anticipation most feel when entering a Ritz Carlton.

 

Think about why Ritz Carlton is Ritz Carlton. First, they seem to have designed themselves with the customer in mind. They are friendly, efficient, courteous, and smart. In a sense they have also trained all of us to think of them positively because they deliver every day. Even after, perhaps especially after, a day of work, you enter a world in which that company has created a sense of eagerness and relief in the mindset of a customer opening the front door (actually someone else will likely open the front door for you). You enter the lobby and know that people will be nice to you, that the entire experience is intended to be hassle free and relaxing. If you are a businessperson, you look forward to crossing the threshold as if you have completed a tough race (and, given work or travel today, you have).

 

The reality is that too often banks are hassle-full. Despite the marketing, many appear to be getting worse because of attitude, compliance, and other CYA requirements, no matter the best intentions of top management. People (you and me) want to be in a Ritz Carlton. People (you and me) want to exit a bank branch or end our conversation with a banker as quickly as possible. Going to a bank is more like going to a dentist (a chore) than going to a Apple store.

 

Of course, some notable exceptions exist. Probably Umpqua Bank has garnered the most publicity both for its changes to branch design and, more important, the way it has rethought the customer experience. A May American Banker article cites Umpqua having made the decision ten years ago “to try to turn its physical properties into places that people wanted to linger in, rather than speed past.” And speed pass most customers do, with a noted retail industry consultant stating that people actually do pick up their pace when they walk by a branch in a city setting. Umpqua looked at non-banks like the Ritz, Disney, and others in thinking about how it served the customer and its President, Ray Davis, is largely on target when he comments, “The best ideas bankers can get will come from outside the industry.”

 

Companies like Umpqua can take full advantage of programs such as the Ritz offers because they have rethought their operating model and look at non-bank programs with the intent of implementing the best practices they offer. Most banks offer the six-hour Ritz Carlton program and then largely forget about it the next day, going back to their old ways of doing business. Unless you are willing to exploit a program like the Ritz’s, unless you are willing to focus on how to make their best practices part of your own DNA, you are wasting your time. The Ritz program, or others like it, do not come with a Pauline moment whereby the attendees decide to change the way they do business forever more. From its very inception banks like Umpqua have operated with a customer emphasis. The amount of change that most banks require is daunting, but the need for change increases every day.

 

 

For many banks Umpqua itself has now become Ritz Carlton-like with bankers traveling from around the world to learn from the bankers in Portland. Despite all Umpqua and a few others like it have to offer, once back home the memory of the banker’s trip quickly fades.

 

Banks need to deal with some difficult basics:

 

• Honestly, today, what is the customer experience like? Is it consistent across your footprint or does it differ based upon the personalities and whims of individual employees?

 

• What customer pain points do you need to eliminate?

 

• What is your strategy? What do you stand for?

 

• Who are your key customers and why?

 

• What differentiates you from the other thousands of banks and credit unions and alternative lenders?

 

But, all this is hard and most banks only give these considerations lip service. Instead, they can hire a firm that gives them hope for six hours and transports them to another world outside banking, an easy choice that we might all make. But, it is too short-term a choice when more fundamental questions remain unanswered.

 

Last week, a friend recounted the agony he was going through to refinance his mortgage at a BIG bank he also happened to work for. Unsympathetic and tone-deaf staff basically could have cared less about him, even thought he was their colleague. Maybe they need a Ritz Carlton six-hour program!