NYT has an amazing interactive graphic showing the results of the American Time Use Survey. The good news for bank marketers is that you can see the ebbs and flows of how customers spend their time.
The bad news: Americans spend on average no more than 6 minutes per day doing “assorted services,” a category that includes doctor visits, haircuts, voting, hiring plumbers and…banking. At it’s peak in the daily cycle, no more than 1% of the populace is ever engaged in this activity. Compare that to the cagetories of “Work” or “TV and Movies,” which enjoy peaks of 33% and 39%, respectively.
Or is all this good news? Have financial services become so efficient as to allow Americans to conduct their banking affairs in fewer than 6 minutes per day?
It’s a reasonable hypothesis: online banking and ATMs have made money management so convenient that banking is now not much more than a utility — something that requires no extraordinary attention, except when things go wrong.
Of course, as they say, out of sight, out of mind. Utilities are critical, but not terribly interesting or remarkable.
How in the world can banks hope to regain mindshare, when consumers spend so little time thinking about banking? Is there potential in connecting banking to other activities which command more of Americans’ time and attention?
I don’t think you can improve banking’s “sexy-quotient.” It forces financial institutions to stray way too far outside their comfort zone.
I think consumers put banking on the same plane as toilet paper. They need it, but they will never “engage” with it. For most of us — as consumers — I think the goal is to get the “amount of time thinking about banking” down to zero.
What’s fascinating about this is the tension in objectives: financial marketers want to “build relationships,” “foster engagement” and get people to interact more with their brands… while financial consumers want just the opposite. They’d prefer to get a divorce, not “build a relationship.” But, alas, it’s a marriage of convenience and necessity.
As I tweeted a few weeks ago, “How can financial institutions expect to ‘build relationships’ when people try to spend as little time banking as possible?”
Financial institutions want to foist something on consumers that consumers don’t want. Banking is a chore. A commodity. It’s like having to go to the gas station or dry cleaners. No one would do it if they didn’t have to. Inasmuch, please, Mr. Banker or Mrs. Credit Union, just address my immediate needs with knowledgeable staff and efficient service. If you’re “friendly” and “personal” while you’re at it, great, but those aren’t deal-breakers. Basically, just get out of my way as quickly as you can. Everyone’s got better things to do than banking.
I suppose you could replace “never” with “don’t want to.”