Dont Bank on it.

The UK banking sector has been the seething battleground for a cold war of contempt in the last few years. I have recently changed banks and am joining the yearly migration of students into graduate finances and "the real world" as it is continually referred to by every brow-beaten worker I speak to. This got me thinking about the overall experience of banking in the UK.

From early teens we begin to feel the pressures to lock our money up safe in such an institution and often become lifetime customers. Indeed it would still seem that signing up with a bank is marginally better than stuffing cash into a mattress, although there is a fine line. Special offers, account rewards, AER's and credit limits, the language of the industry. Real question is do they actually give a monkeys or do they just put up with us much akin to a parent humouring a child when "looking after their pocket money"?

Natwest have been attempting to up their game recently with their 'Customer Charter'. From what I can make out they are dragging the organisation and their firmly 1980's styled uniforms kicking and screaming into an age of reasonable consumer expectation. A cursory twitter search for Natwest yields sentiment similar to my own, which is that their charter is superficial at best. Bold claims are made: "We are committed to listening" and "We are committed to helping when you need us", which is nice to know considering they might be sitting on hundreds of thousands of pounds of your money. Personally I had the worst customer service of experience in my entire life with the Navy-clad polyester lovers at Natwest. After putting a fraud stop on my card without telling me, and then fobbing me off with a spotty 18 year old who distracted himself from his Xbox long enough to rise to the lofty position of their Customer service manager, I rapidly made for the exit and closed my account.

HSBC happily transferred over my current account (with all standing orders intact) and have been positively competent ever since. However they do seem to have an alarming desire to sign me up for Business loans and multiple mortgages every time I sneak into a branch to cash a check. I am no financial analyst but it seems a little over zealous in light of the recent lending crisis. Its not all plain sailing though, a friend recently told me that HSBC closed his account without notification because he was a few pounds overdrawn, nice to feel valued isn't it?

So you have chosen your Bank and have your fingers crossed. You want to transfer money I hear you cry? BACS payments between accounts have historically taken 3 days to clear, with the money only actually moving anywhere on the third day. In an age of fast moving Business this is pretty laughable, and as this thread points out, the only justification seems to be profiteering from the banks with Europe suffering no such delay.

On the wider topic of banks and their inescapable role as pillars of our economy, the credit crunch debacle is only now being put to bed with occasional skirmishes cropping up on the assurance that it wont happen again. It amazes me that measures such as 'ring fencing' of core banking services (e.g. preserving the basic infrastructure and assets allowing us to buy beer at Tescos) are still only being debated. Surely any good Business should compartmentalise their operations so that we don't have any more Lehman Brother style house of cards?

Personally I think we as consumers need to be more mercenary. All too often we feel as though the bank is doing us a favour by protecting our hard-earned cash from theft and affray. But when interest rates on borrowed funds spike above 20% and interest on savings struggles to even beat inflation, you could be forgiven for shouting scrooge. At the end of the day its your money so make sure you shop around. 


My tip of the week for those who are looking to put a little aside is Santander's E-saver with a tidy 3% Gross AER and no faffing around if you want to get the cash out. Its no money spinner but it still beats hiding it under your bed and brandishing a baseball bat... Just.

A little bird told me...

I am a recent convert to the church of Twitter. I don't mind admitting I used to think it was a vacuous waste of everyone's time which offered nothing to the mix that wasn't already catered for many times over by existing social networks. It would appear that in the most part, I was wrong.

Having just discovered the @mentions tab of the web interface (it took me a while) and begun to engage brain with what goes into my tweets I have realised that it is very much a case of "give and you will receive". Twitter is quite literally buzzing with a kind of incestuous activity. End users, multinational companies, and celebrities all slugging it out together in a world of 160 character text shots, with little of the social trappings or hierarchy which govern everyday life.

My feeling is that the concept has been ultimately successful due to the element of anonymity. It allows an outlet for theatrical like outbursts and prodding of multi-national companies alike. Users need only a few details to sign up and can proport to be whoever they like if a name is not already taken. Once you have your twitter wings you can speak to the community of some 50+ million active users (interesting read here, some creative accounting on the total number of users but its still pretty impressive for a fledgling network..)

Twitter's success has got the corporate buy-out buzzards circling, however the organisation and its newly re-instated founder Jack Dorsey (BBC story here) have a struggle on their hands. Twitter is posting some pretty weak profits compared to competitors (Business Insider take a look) and is riding off a whole lot of intangibles surrounding the brand and the concept. On Friday Google was reported to be closing in on a $250 million dollar deal to buy the network, perhaps they will have the magic touch to make advertising revenues work without killing the buzz.

For those of you looking to up your involvement on Twitter some of my personal favourite songbirds include: @Queen_UK, @ProfBrianCox, BillBailey, WiredUK, and not forgetting the recently infamous Bronx Zoo's Cobra which has been a consistent stream of chuckles for the last few weeks. Not least because a fictional account for an escaped cobra managed to achieve 200,000 more followers in a week than the Bronx zoo itself has managed in a lifetime...

But by far and away the most suprising and empowering thing about Twitter is the ability to drum up responses from the mere whiff of a brand name. Having seen social media marketing efforts from the corporate perspective, I know that the majority of switched on organisations have a dedicated person scouring Twitter for a mention of their products, be it positive or negative. As an experiment over the last few days I have been firing out some requests for help, complaints, and promotions of brands which I have encountered. Within a few hours I recieved a response to every single mention. Could this be the end of being put on hold whilst an automated librarian tries to fob you off with stale advice? Why not cut to the chase and badmouth the CEO on twitter, he will probably give you a call...

Follow me @peterwillb


Update 8/4/11: Twitter adds Fortune telling to the mix.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12976254

Learning not to shout

I once had a teacher who made it his mission to never shout (lets call him Mr W). He would stare down situations which would drive lesser Academics to despair with a steely determination not to lose his cool. When his colleagues would have resorted to chastising and blasting students, he managed to achieve the net result of quality teaching delivery without ever threatening his presumably single figure blood pressure readings. It is surprising how regularly I have considered this small stand in the tumultuous seas of adolescent learning in the days since I was taught by this man. I can only assume that there was some inherent resounding logic which has encouraged me to carry his mantra to this day.

It led me to thinking about the amount of noise in our normal operating environments. Industry will tell you that if you aren't shouting louder than your competitors then you are likely to fall into the oblivion of customer indifference. I propose to you an alternative. Perhaps you shouldn't be shouting at all. Perhaps you should instead be choosing a quiet room where you can make your pitch to the customers in a natural, reasonably paced tone of voice which expresses not only your company mission but your natural predisposition for doing Business. Nobody wants to sit in a meeting room with white noise and megaphones in the background, so why do we put up with it in the sales and acquisition process?

There is a great blog (and organisation) which embodies the mantra of shouting smart, not loud. 37Signals (http://37signals.com/) provide a range of web-based collaboration apps for Businesses to handle their operations. Even more practical than this however is their blog, 'Signals versus Noise" http://37signals.com/svn) with excellent day-to-day tips on tackling life's little challenges without ever losing your cool.

Whilst there will always be competition in your chosen sector of Business my message is this. You can easily spend infinite amounts of resource and energy competing in an escalation of One-upmanship with your competitors. However much like a heated legal battle where the only winners are lawyers, you might find that the only people laughing in the aftermath of the battle are Google with their Ad-words and third party marketing organisations with ever inflated budgets.

Instead why not try to take the example of Mr W and keep your voice quieted. If you happen to stroll into a crowded, noisy room, why not step back and review. Would you be better off changing your spots and entering another room where the background noise is a little less debilitating.

If only it were so easy I hear you cry! Well I appreciate that every Business would probably love to find a quiet room full of receptive punters, however just acknowledging that they exist is the first step towards capitalising on a less frantic revenue stream. A slightly unfortunate illustration is Jamie Oliver's most recent Social Experiment with school drop outs being educated by national experts in various disciplines (http://www.jamieoliver.com/news/jamie-sends-last-chance-teens-to-his-dre). A great idea you might think, unfortunately however the majority of episodes to date have essentially seen an intellectual heavyweight being battered into submission by mobile ringtones and playground banter. The two parties are no longer communicating, they are simply shouting past each other, with the net effect being a train wreck of frustration and wasted energy.

So what can be done to avoid a similar situation in your Business? Well my argument would be that taking a moment to re-open your ears and acknowledge the cacophony of noise around you is the first step towards finding a lucrative Business niche where you no longer fight competitors, you instead pass right through them only to find their vocal protests fading into a distant hum.

The Business of University

My University has yesterday announced itself as the sixth in the UK to charge the full student fees amount of £9000 (http://tinyurl.com/5rljxy3). I would prefer to skirt around the contentious protests and heated arguments over the 'indignity' of the Browne review and subsequent breaching of the existing £~3000 covenant. Much has been said, written, and thrown off buildings about that topic already.

Instead it got me thinking about the emerging Business of University. I think we are witnessing a realisation of a now long established trend in Universities unveiling their murky guise as a commercial organisation much like any other. There is the prevalent sentiment amongst students that the charitable status of a University or the duty of care optionally extended to students means that they only have our best interests at heart and that we are safe. To a degree (pun intended) that is true. Universities do want to nurture students and provide them with a quality education, but I would argue that when you get down to it their intentions extend little beyond the caring behaviour of a commercial organisation looking after its customers. With the new fees systems this truth will become even more evident in the way in which students demand value for money.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. By any model of Business competition this kind of situation (should) drive up standards and force providers to take a long hard look at what they are offering. A new market will emerge but those potential undergraduates creeping onto the field will need to have their wits about them as the University market just veered firmly towards the Phones4u model. Marketing departments will be going into overdrive, University Councils will be drawing up strategic plans, and student recruitment departments are going to need a few new phone lines and a lot more coffee. There are going to be battles fought, but not of the fire extinguisher chucking variety this time. Instead the battles are going to be pitched over the best students and the perceived best Universities. Whilst these battles are not necessarily new, a gradient of fees undoubtedly raises the stakes.

I am sure it will disappoint some that University can no longer be seen as a throw away exercise. Bank of Mum and Dad or trust funds are unlikely to shell out thrice the cash for tuition if the students heart isn't really in it. University is no longer a jolly in the financial sense, but that doesn't mean the party is over. Those who have solid reasons for their course choice and their selection of Academic institution will be fine. With more lenient repayment thresholds and a Universities scrabbling to improve their offerings things could be a lot worse.

Its a buyer's market ladies and gentlemen, the buyer just needs to beware.

The Death of Shopping

I am told that there was once a time when a shopping trip excited even the most reluctant or stingy of patrons. The golden era of supermarkets and shopping malls in the 1960's (http://www.groceteria.com/about/a-quick-history-of-the-supermarket/) seems to now be a thing of distant memory. A small supermarket near me has just redesigned their store in a bid to match what seems to be the status quo in modern retail. Gone are the human conveyor belts which have amused generations of children and here are the endless rows of tyrannical self-checkout machines which seem insistent on chastising every customer because they didnt "place their item in the bagging area"

Looking at our current situation I struggle to see how shopping was ever an exciting pursuit. Now of course I realise that many of our number still love the idea of heading out to the high street to buy some new shoes or try on 15 different dresses (no gender bias intended - dresses are for everyone). But for every enthusiastic shopper you see skipping through department stores, there would seem to be 3 reluctant bag carriers following in their wake.

I thought that retailers were supposed to be providing us a service and a 'shopping experience'? Well the trend would seem to be an increase in manual labour for the customer and an overall decline in human interaction during the shopping process. In a time of recession it would seem prudent to be engaging the customer in any way possible, how else will they be separated from their hard earned cash?

Many towns are nurturing a growing traditional market community (collection of interesting articles here: http://www.wolvercotefarmersmarket.co.uk/news.html). I believe this a clear indication that there is still a place for one-on-one, whites of the eyes transactions. Far flung from the world of Robotic shopping, hoards of shoppers head to the grocery and meat stands of these street and farmers markets with a look of wide eyed fascination. Spotty pears and mud specked eggs are seen as a rustic qualification instead of grounds for a complaint as they would be in high street supermarkets a few meters away.

There is a fine line between offering choice and convinience and retailers taking the easy option in the form of unmanned supermarkets, self service retail outlets, and 24/7 online ordering. Retailers might say that they are giving us what we want, but are they infact taking the easy option at our expense?

Why not divert to your nearest street market, or spark up a conversation with nearest shop attendent next time you hit the high street and reacquaint yourself with the joy (or at least the humanity) of shopping.

The Hourglass of Networking: is your time running out?

The time is coming for another round of Graduates to get out into the market and find themselves a job. There is a lot of talk about the "Worst Graduate Employment figures in decades" (http://tinyurl.com/2fqfhz8). Now this may be true on paper but personally I think there is a mechanism which anyone who is willing can use in order to circumvent the increasingly difficult process of finding employment.

It all comes down to Networking. You dont have to look very far to find several forests worth of networking books which will all claim to give you the power to Network your way towards success (http://tinyurl.com/46x2u46). The topic is rarely even mentioned in the majority of Academic of Vocational courses during a Young persons education, yet it might actually be one of the most important skills you ever learn. Those who are proficient at the skill of social interactions in a Business context leave swathes of grandeur and vocal supporters behind them. Richard Branson is a great example. His "laser-focus eye contact" and unflappable conversation style is said to make him an extremely compelling speaker both on and off the podium (http://www.warrencass.com/what-richard-branson-can-teach-us-about-networking-by-ivan-misner/). Those who are poor at communicating in a Business function are either actively avoided, or if they are lucky, are simply allowed to fade into obscurity to work on their little chunk of the world without incident or growth. The truth of it is that no matter how good you are at Business or how much potential you are internalising, you need to be able to network for it to ever be realised.

Simply ask yourself this: what is the lasting impression you give when meeting someone for the first time in a Business Context? Human nature is to broadly categorise those who you can remember into positive and negative experiences either side of a margin of indifference. Now project this into your day to day experience. If you head to a Graduate Recruitment fair or trade show and meet 15 people who you have sustained conversations with, how many of them will remember you fondly or with interest out of the hundreds of others they have exchanged handshakes with that day?

Well I wont be writing any premium priced 'Black magic' motivational books on the subject any time soon, but I would say this, don't overlook the value of good old fashioned conversation. I see employment fairs and trade expos as blank canvas opportunities. Everyone at those events is looking to build bridges otherwise they would have stayed at home. Head out, head up, and just talk to people who look interesting, for as long as seems natural. In my experience this kind of initiation often leads to a wealth of opportunities which would otherwise seem impossible.

So how to make sense of your ever-increasing bank of contacts once you crack the networking paradigm? Well in my experience expansion of your Business network goes in repeating cycles, each one shaped like an hourglass. You start broad by approaching as many people as you can whilst your direction is fairly fluid. During developed conversations you hone in on a point of interest with a few key people and topics. You reach a point of epiphany at the neck of the hourglass where one or two valued contacts will provide key guidance or experience which will define you in some way. It is then time to use your new-found experience to throw yourself back into the mix and begin once again widening your network to discover new fields as you reach the top of the hourglass.

You might be surprised how many companies are still hiring, but if you don't ask you will never know.