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View from the top Specialist financial services company Birmingham Midshires has used Keane’s e-solutions consultancy to develop a wide ranging e-commerce strategy, and is now offering online applications for commercial loans, ISAs and unsecured personal loans.
Q: WHEN DID YOUR COMPANY FIRST SET UP A WEBSITE?
A:

The first Birmingham Midshires website went online in 1996.

In the main, the site reproduced our brochures, with a very bland description of our products and services. Looking back, that was exactly the wrong thing to do, because it was just not viable.

Our brochures change all the time, as do our products, and we had no means of keeping the website information up to date.

What we should have been doing – and what we now do – is to look at things from the customers’ perspective.

What are their burning issues, and how can we help them resolve those problems by giving them the appropriate information and services?

Q: WHAT DID THE COMPANY DO NEXT ABOUT ONLINE SERVICES?
A:

There was a period when everyone seemed to be going functionality crazy – who could offer the latest gadget and who was winning the race to be the next step ahead technologically?

We took the left-field view, opted out of the rat race and built a deliberately simple site our customers would use.

In our experience, one of the biggest complaints internet users have is the speed of response to their emails, and response rates in general.

We addressed this and now consistently rank very highly against the industry’s leading turnaround times for web-based customer enquiries, and achieve a 100% response rate.

Our proposition is very different from the ‘Big Four’ high-street players and our customers expect different things.

This is a key difference. It was important that whoever we chose to work with on the design, build and maintenance of our site recognised this.

We found a company based in the North West, called Action Multimedia, who really worked hard to get under the skin of our business values and personality as a company.

We’ve gone on to build a very strong partnership with them.

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CONSPECTUS May 2001
Copyright © 2001 Prime Marketing Publications