Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

In order to create a survey, you should start with all the things you already know about how banks try to contact their customers. I'm sure they target you and you can talk to your friends, professors, parents, etc. to see what methods they've seen used. Then turn those methods into questions to see which ones are used most frequently and to what degree.

The important part is going to be finding a way to contact people within the banks that actually have control over their marketing. You may want to focus on a specific position. You could find that people who work in the local branches as loan officers or tellers are going to have a very different strategy for developing relationships with customers than their actual marketing department does. You should definitely find out what title the participant holds as well as whether or not there is any sort of bonus structure in place that is based on sales$ or if there is any sort of repercussions for not meeting goal sales$. Those factors can drastically change the type and amount of marketing individuals will do. If you are looking for people holding specific positions, try using LinkedIn to find willing participants.

Okay, all of that being said, some basic questions regarding marketing to credit card customers could be:
1. How often do you create new offers or make changes to your existing offers.
2. How many different incentives are offered to people who sign up for credit cards and does the customer get to choose their reward plan.
3. How many times do you send a direct mail piece to current credit card customers promoting new or add-on features available.
4. How many prospects do you target each year and what is the volume of direct mail you send out to each during that year.
5. How often do you email current customers regarding their plan or additional incentives they could receive.
6. What type of features do you offer on your website for customers to contact you.
7. How often do you update your website to be more customer friendly? How do you inform customers/prospects of these changes.
8. What type of customer-friendly payment plans do you offer?
9. Do you have a presence through social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, etc.?
10. Do you monitor accounts for strange activity and contact the customer if something gets flagged?
11. What other events, specific to a particular account, prompt you to contact the customer?
12. What features do you offer that make you more attractive, customer-friendly or generally better than your competition.
13. What pro-active steps do you take to keep your customers from switching to your competitors?
14. What type of information do you keep on file regarding each customer and how do you use it to contact them? This includes preferences, activities, tastes, likes, dislikes and complaints. (Example: Do they send cards on clients' birthdays or offers for card designs with animals if they own a cat?)

These are just a few I could think of quickly, not in any order.

For metrics, make sure you know the position the respondent holds, the size of the bank they work for (both $ and # of employees) and you may want to ask for an age range as well. Also, give answers for respondents to pick from (a/b/c/d, Scale of 1-5, True/False, etc.) for the majority of questions. Keep short-answer questions to a minimum. You will have a much lower response if you ask people to write too much. You do however want to leave a space for them to write any additional comments they may want to share. Also, make sure they know what you are using the information for and include a CLEAR nondisclosure statement.

Hope this helps!

Most of the relationship marketing ideas which I have heard which relate to banks have been attempts to have associates cross sell customers. In other words, customers from one area of the bank are encouraged to buy products from other areas of the bank.

You would need to be careful if you use a questionnaire approach to be sure that the banks offer similar sets of products. One question you might ask is whether or not the banks offer incentives for associates to provide information on products outside their own area. For example, folks working in a branch office might have incentives to refer wealthy folk to a financial planning arm.

If this were my project, I would begin by downloading financial information on the bank. In the US, public companies have to file a form 10K which has a substantial amount of information about their products, markets, programs, and perceived areas of growth. This information could help you select target banks, and can help you increase your list of questions. Good luck.