Banking and numbers seem like such a natural fit. Cohorts in crime, as it were. But sometimes the numbers just don’t seem to add up. They’re supposed to tell a story. But when you talk about banks and customer relationships, the numbers too often add up to an incoherent mess.

It’s no wonder that many bank presidents, retail banking leaders and bank marketers probably pine for a good stiff Scotch or a bracing gin and tonic after looking at studies of consumer behavior. It’s all baffling.

In fact, barkeeps throughout Massachusetts could really spur business if they just printed out a bunch of copies of the latest Ernst & Young Global Banking survey. It’s 62 pages of number upon number upon number, all of which adds up to a lot of pabulum and confusing, contradictory advice. Send a few copies to the local bankers, along with a note that Happy Hour starts at 5 p.m., and watch business pick up immediately.

It’s not that the fine folks at E&Y don’t know how to do a survey. They actually got the opinions of more than 30,000 banking customers across the globe. Want to know what Brazilians think of lending institutions? It’s in there. If you want to know the temperature of consumers in South Africa, look no further. These guys are nothing if not complete.

But at the end of the day it’s not as if the survey sheds any new light on anything. Consumers, it says, want better pricing on bank products. And they want more transparency about what those products cost. They like seeing more services delivered online. But they also want a local branch, where they can talk to real people when they want.

You can go into any McDonalds and survey the people waiting for their Big Macs, and get the same results.

This And That

 

Studies like this are meant to give banks some kind of roadmap about what to offer a changing demographic. But when everyone wants everything, that’s pretty hard to do.

Let’s play a game. You are the CEO of Smart Community Bank, sitting smack in the heart of central Massachusetts. How would you plan your course of action, given this information:

In the U.S., 90 percent of respondents said they were very satisfied or satisfied with their branch experience, and 83 percent were hunky-dory with their Internet banking experience at their primary bank. In total, U.S. banks report the highest customer satisfaction levels in the world.

This year, 45 percent of bank customers in the U.S. changed their primary bank, and another 5 percent say they’re planning to. That’s up from 38 percent last year, and in contrast to the 34 percent of customers worldwide who changed relationships. In total, U.S. banks report the highest customer churn in the world.

This sounds like a bad conversation between boyfriend and girlfriend. Customers, it seems, love their banks. But they’re not in love with them. Maybe it would be better if they saw other people?

Maybe banks could pay customers to stay with them? That’s a pretty good idea when you look around the globe. Worldwide, 60 percent of the people Ernst & Young polled said they thought their loyalty should be rewarded with better service, and 70 percent said they should get lower fees or higher rates. But not in Earth’s Capital of Capitalism. For U.S. customers, those figures were 45 and 60 percent, respectively. More importantly, they were the lowest of all the countries surveyed. Here, you can’t even buy loyalty.

And yet, U.S. consumers seem obsessed over money. They told the Ernst & Young researchers that when they do switch banks, it’s probably because the bank is charging high fees (57 percent cited this), or weren’t paying high enough rates on deposits (the answer for 35 percent).

All of this is enough to come to one serious conclusion: consumers don’t know what they want. And listening to them will likely send bankers down a rabbit hole of confusion.

So while it seems contradictory to suggest that bankers are better off ignoring what customers tell them, actual experience will likely prove this suggestion correct. Bankers are probably better off just going with what their gut tells them to do.

That means they need to offer convenient branches, with knowledgeable staff, but also a growing lineup of online and mobile banking channels. They need to offer competitive rates, and charge competitive fees. But if they’re a little high on either, it likely won’t kill them in the marketplace; only if they’re excessively out of line. And although consumers say they want transparency and lucidity in disclosures about costs, any banker who’s booked an airline ticket recently knows that if you can put up with the complaining, customers will put up with add-on fees.

It’s not exactly a clear path to success, or to market differentiation. But maybe consumers don’t really need to see a lot of differences in their banks. They just one that makes them feel reasonably comfortable. After all, banking is confusing. It’s all numbers – and sometimes they just don’t seem to add up.

Vincent M. Valvo is CEO of Agility Resources Group LLC. He can be reached at vvalvo@agilityresourcesgroup.com.