Financial Firms Aren't Reaching Out to Customers: Poll

According to a poll by Boston Consulting Group, only 30% of consumers worldwide have been contacted by their financial institutions during the current recession.

This flies in the face of textbook CRM, which asserts that such outreach will bear fruit even in bad times. In the United States just 53% of customers who haven't heard from their primary bank lately report being pleased with its service overall. Conversely, 83% of those who have been contacted are satisfied.

These numbers hold true for other financial institutions. Seventy-one percent of people who've been contacted by their investment advisers are satisfied; among those who haven't, this drops to 34%. And among primary insurers, 71% of those who received communication are pleased, vs. 45% for those who haven't.

If there's an upper limit to the amount of reassurance these firms can provide, it's far from being reached. Only 5% of all consumers say they've gotten too much communication.

Boston Consulting says customers who haven't been contacted want honest discussions with their bankers, asset managers and insurers about the crisis.

What do they want to hear? Simple, fact-based talk regarding the overall economy and their financial providers' stability.

Boston Consulting also reviewed financial institutions' late-2008 print advertising. The consultancy found that “surprisingly few” ads were updated to reflect the times.

Instead, most firms ran ads that neither addressed the current economic condition nor highlighted issues raised in the survey.

These worries cut across international lines. While nearly half — 46% — of U.S. consumers polled say they've lost trust in financial institutions, this figure balloons to 60% in the United Kingdom.

Boston Consulting surveyed more than 5,700 adults in six countries last November.