We continue to move in the right direction, in no small part because you make it easy for our customers to do business with North Shore Bank. That’s one of the big messages from the customer loyalty survey we deployed in April to 19,900 North Shore Bank and Illinois State Bank customers. It garnered responses from 1,500 people, and we saw positive traction in our loyalty and net promoter scores.

Our marketing team closely analyzed responses to questions about how easy it is to do business with North Shore Bank, because that’s a primary driver of customer acquisition and retention. Our employees — that is to say, you, and specifically how friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, personal, and caring you are — are the biggest reason customers gave us a high score in this area.

“Customers appreciate we acknowledge them by name, know their needs, listen, and proactively provide solutions. They find it is easy to get things done, receive an answer to a question, or resolve an issue over the phone or in person,” says Kevin Wilderman, vice president, marketing. “Customers are unhappy when we didn’t get back to them as expected. Every employee needs to be diligent about setting expectations and returning calls and emails on a timely basis, preferably the same day.”

Respondents also answered questions about their experience with video tellers. Based on the responses we received, video tellers’ scores are in line with those of other employees working with our customers. Customers appreciate the extended hours and convenience offered by video tellers, and appreciate video tellers’ efforts to deliver the same kind of personalized service our branch employees are known for.

Customers also appreciate how trustworthy our employees are — this is a huge factor for our long-term customers. Finally, our online and mobile banking services are doing very well with our customers. Overall, our Net Promoter Score, which measures the likelihood of a customer recommending us to someone else, increased since the previous survey last autumn.