Today at Loyalty World in London, I had an opportunity to interview Anthony Thomson, co-founder and Chairman of Metro Bank. Launched in 2010, Metro Bank is the first new High Street Bank in the UK in 140 years.
Anthony shared with me how he made great customer service (and the resulting buzz generated from it) the primary driver of the brand.
Direct link to Metro Bank is building marketing success through great customer service on YouTube.
The market prior to Metro Bank was an oligopoly controlled by a handful of big banks. Anthony told me the customer satisfaction among high street banks was horrible which was the Metro Bank opportunity.
Interestingly, Anthony and his colleagues didn’t look at other banks for market research, instead looked at retailers like John Lewis and Apple that have great customer service.
This led to retail bank branches open seven days a week, 12 hours a day.
Pet friendly!
Metro Bank is pet friendly (which has driven media attention).
I love this quote from the video: "What it says to people is that if they can bring their dog into our bank and we don’t mind if he pees on the floor, or worse which is what dogs do, then maybe we care more about you as a customer than we do about us as a bank."
They even ran a contest where dogs were given samples of three tasty treats and asked to vote for their favourites. The biscuit which has the most votes across Metro Bank branches nationwide was named as the official Metro Bank Dog Biscuit.
Photo: blogs.telegraph.co.uk





Good customer service means having thorough knowledge of your inventory, experience with your products, and being able to help customers make the best choices for them.
Posted by: social media campaign tools | November 05, 2012 at 11:17 PM
Being a pet-friendly establishment is a good thing because it makes more customers feel welcome about doing business with the bank. It's a small but meaningful gesture that businesses can make.
Posted by: MicroSourcing | November 06, 2012 at 01:23 AM
Customer service is one of those topics where it is easy to speak in broad generalities. Sayings such as the customer is always right and service begins with a smile easily convey basic, unqualified principles that mask the fact that what defines excellent customer service will always be incredibly individual in nature.
Posted by: Facebook App Development | November 07, 2012 at 12:32 AM
Yes this is a definite thing which every company should focus if you want to market your company you should satisfy your client or customer. great piece of work done by metro bank
Posted by: Android App Development | November 13, 2012 at 01:16 AM
Plus they are very approachable when it comes to social media as their CRM is one that is well lauded by the financial newsbits. They are a good example of people friendly banks that treat their clients big or small with due respect.
Posted by: Min D. McDowell | February 20, 2013 at 10:18 PM