The web and business environment is abuzz with a lot of models on customer generated media(CGM), WOM( Word-of-mouth), viral marketing etc.
Here's a great example of customer driven banking:
Yunus, 57, is the founder of Grameen Bank, headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh. (Grameen is the Bangladeshi word for "village.") He started the bank to provide desperately needed credit to his country's desperately poor villagers. The business model he pioneered -- called "microlending" -- broke all the rules of traditional finance. Yunus focused on making loans as small as $30, just enough to get a microbusiness started. He did not ask for collateral. Instead, he required borrowers to organize into small groups and guarantee one another's loans. And he ended up lending almost exclusively to women, who account for 94% of the bank's customers.
The results have been stunning. Over the past two decades, Grameen Bank has grown to include nearly 1,100 branches, covering every corner of Bangladesh. It has made more than 2 million loans worth a combined $2 billion. It boasts a loan-repayment rate of 98%. It's become a model for similar institutions in 50 countries.
There's more. Grameenphone too!
The company is offering "village phones" to rural residents. Grameen Bank lends money to individual entrepreneurs to buy the phones. These entrepreneurs then sell the service to their fellow villagers and use the income to repay the loans. Yunus's goal is to have at least one cell-phone in each of Bangladesh's 65,000 villages within six years.
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