Studie zur Ausrichtungvon Banken an Kundenprozessenam Beispiel des Internet

Banks permanently claim to supply customer-orientated services. However,banking services are still focused on purely delivering financial products.Customers who approach the bank will usually receive financial products but norespective solution for their problem. In that way, the customers’ perception ofbank services is often far from satisfaction. Also important targets of businessstrategy (e.g., achieving customer loyalty, cross- and up-selling) get failed. Therefore,the consistent alignment of financial services to customer processesbecomes more and more important and will foster the competitiveness of banksconsiderably.This paper investigates the extent of customer support provided by banks withrespect to the customers’ problem solving process. The study focuses on a certaincustomer interface within the multichannel approach – the Internet. As the basis ofthis study, the paper offers the theoretical framework of customer processes.Second, it provides an empirical identification of customer processes which hasbeen conducted by a comprehensive questionnaire. Third, the development of anappropriate methodology and the investigation of websites represent the main partof the study. Our investigation comprises a total of 100 websites from banks inGermany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, and USA. As a result, the paper reveals thatmost of the analyzed websites fail to assist customers within their processes.However, the idea of supporting customer processes is rising and the mediumInternet offers a high potential to implement this idea.