Most Popular Operations Content
"Best Practices" For Obtaining Customer Email Addresses
11/05/2001
Are there any "best practices" for obtaining customer email addresses?
Pitfalls When Exchanging Corporate Checks For Cashier's Checks
11/05/2001
When answering a recent question regarding cashing corporate checks, Mary Beth Guard, indicated she did not advocate exchanging corporate checks for cashier's checks. She indicated "that course of action is fraught with potential pitfalls". Can you elaborate on the pitfalls? It is a common banking practice to issue teller's checks (cashier's or officialchecks) in lieu of corporate checks. The teller's checks are made payable exactly as the original corporate checks . The corporate checks are stamped with an endorsement "official check issued in lieu of this item" along with the official number. Thanks for your help in clarifying this matter. I would much rather hear the pitfalls from you rather than a judge!
Communicating More Effectively With The 37+ Markets
11/05/2001
Other business costs are falling while marketing costs are rising. Yet, response rates to many traditional marketing and sales techniques are off. There is growing impatience with a function of business that is costing more, delivering less and resists accountability. In addition,baby boomer and older consumers (37+) are the wealthiest, best educated and most sophisticated of purchasers and marketing and sales communications are not creating motivating communications, effective sales presentations and service improvement programs to better capture and keep these consumers. A Coopers and Lybrand study found in a study of 100 leading companies that marketing departments tend to be "ill-focused and over-indulged" with department heads who "overstated their contribution to the company, but could not specify what the nature of the contribution was." A 1995 McKinsey report somberly warned, "Doubts are surfacing about the very basis of contemporary marketing." The report charged marketing departments with generating "few new ideas," being "unimaginative," and failing to "pick up the right signals." Finally, Kevin Clancy and Robert Shulman, both formerly with consumer researcher Yankelovich Clancy Shulman predict a marketing revolution "because failure is self-evident and everybody -- stockholders, directors, CEOs, customers, the government -- is angry because marketing, which should be driving business, doesn't work."Now that the adult median age is in the mid-40s and continuing to rise, pressure is building on bank marketing and sales to learn how to better market to a dominantly older consumer population. Though we don't notice it happening -- any more than a child notices that he has grown an inch taller during the summer -- changes take place across our full life span in how information is processed by our brains (which process information sent to it by the five senses) and the mind (where thinking takes place). How a 30-year-old mind processes the contents of a commercial, print ad or direct mail piece will be markedly different from how a 50- or 60-year-old mind processes the same information. Is there literature or other information available to help bank marketers communicate more effectively with the 37+ markets?
Willful Violations of Opening Procedures
11/05/2001
I was researching information on BOL and came across an answer that you had given regarding Opening Procedures - one vs. two employees. We currently have a policy in place that requires two persons to open. The problem...our CFO arrives extremely early and opens by herself. She knows the policy and accepts responsibility for the fact that she is not following it. The other problem....during a recent audit we were cited for this. The auditors arrive early and thus saw her disregarding policy. I know in Banking that senior management always presents this problem but I need to address it. I really don't want to change our two person policy. The auditors recommended having each employee sign an acknowledgment of policy to be placed in their file. Do you have any other suggestions? We are a very small 2 branch organization in the country.
Patriotic Billboard Do's & Don'ts
11/05/2001
We would like to run some supportive, patriotic advertisements and billboards. Any guidance on "do's" and "don'ts"?