Archive for the 'financial services' Category

Posted by: Peter Massey | 10.01.2011

Dealing with paperwork is never easy. My kitchen is usually full of it on every surface. And none of it is work related as I don’t use paper beyond a day book.

So why do companies send me paper? No doubt they have their reasons but if they want to do business with me why don’t they change? It can’t be more efficient for them and it sure slows things down. Great if they want to say  ’the cheque is in the post”, not if they want to sell me something or keep me as a customer. Dealing with paperwork is too much effort for me – so it must be for them.

Take the example in the picture. This is me trying to cancel some policies and buy some new ones. You can see errors and the history of their processes on the receiving end of this chopped down forest – so presumably the signatories and front line staff can see the corresponding problems at their end? Nahhh

How did it get this far? For example:

a) We can’t cancel the policy unless you put it in writing. But I’ve passed security, you’re recording the call and you’re putting my money back into my same bank account from where it came. We’ll send you the forms.

b) We’ll need the original policy from 15 years ago. Why? You were happily taking my money for 15 years so presumably you have a copy and know what you’re providing. I haven’t got it. You’ll need the XYZ form. Have you got it online. No, yes, maybe.

c) Why can’t you upgrade me to a policy that matches the internet new customer offer – which is why I want to cancel? No, you have to cancel and start over. Starting over means a 20 minute interview and then loads of paper ….. I don’t want the paper – you have to have it. Can you email it. I don’t have email.

d) I’ll just stop the direct debits then I won’t need to do your paperwork. But we wont give you your money back. Great, I’ll have to follow your process but I wont do business with you anymore.

e) What would you do if I gave you feedback to help you improve your process…..? You can guess the answer.

Not to mention, the same letters sent twice, the same forms with different contents, the endless explanations that are incomprehensible. And endless compliance statementy stuff that has no relevance to anything I’m trying to do. The final straw is the checklist that I’m asked to send to show I’ve read all their bits, enclosed all the bits.

There’s a clue here folks – when you need your customer to checklist your work…..maybe the customer effort is becoming silly and the business prevention officer has gone too far. Anyone from Friends Provident want some free consulting?

Customer effort, customer experience, financial services | 1 Comment

Posted by: Peter Massey | 5.10.2010

I use airports a lot. Many seem to be plastered with HSBC red lines, pretty pictures and slogans. Like the one above ” our belief is what we learn from one customer will help us to better serve another”. Of course that makes me wonder how they learn from each customer. Before giving any company feedback I always ask “what would you do if I gave you some feedback?”. From the response you can always tell whether there is an organised way of doing this. And you can tell whether the member of staff believes in it and so tries to get feedback. Or whether they know its a waste of time, turn defensive and try not to take anything on.

Today I had the latter experience with HSBC. Again. Why was I trying to give feedback?

The security on their business bank account is a dumb process with dumb questions. I told them that back in April and before. The security process involved me

• guessing if we have an overdraft facility – we’ve never asked for one, but I certainly don’t know if they gave us one and with a 50/50 chance of being right, I’d hardly call it a security question
• going online, opening the account and reading back the last transaction.

Talking to them today just took me straight back to the multiple run ins with security and my card being cut off whilst trying to get back from Sweden during the ash cloud problem (see blog ). Each time I try to give them feedback but I know I’m wasting my breath by the way it’s rebutted.

Why did I have to call the call centre today anyway? I don’t deal with the banking after all. Months and months of trying to change a name on the account. I was asked to call the call centre by the branch because the paperwork we sent in weeks ago had come through but wasn’t correct. The call centre say it is correct, so it was a complete waste of my time anyway. I asked my PA to call the guy in the branch back to confirm – but she can’t. You can’t call a branch. So much unnecessary customer effort around what should have been a simple change months & months ago.

In April I got so fed up with the way HSBC business accounts work that I tried to move our business bank account. I couldn’t get anyone who would recommend their banking supplier and all the forums were poorly rating everyone. So we took the second best in the consumer world ie Co-Op but the effort involved stopped us eventually. You had to join the Federation of Small Businesses for a fee. They insisted on coming to see you even through you didn’t want to see them. The account opening team screwed up the names and addresses – so we stopped at that point.

So much unnecessary customer effort around what should surely be the simplest process – winning a customer.

So some questions for HSBC:

• When oh when will first direct, clearly the best in the consumer world, open a business account so something sensible can be offered in the SME market.
• What has HSBC done, since spending millions on advertising, to fulfil the slogan ”what we learn from one customer will help us to better serve another”. What have they done to make it practical and true?
• What did marketing think when they made that slogan?

If anyone at HSBC is listening – please reply? I’d love to talk

Customer effort, HSBC, Marketing promise, customer experience, dumb things, financial services, first direct | No Comments

Posted by: admin | 17.08.2009

… the “smart thing” won by several days, even though it gave the “dumb thing” several days head start.

I hope that hasn’t spoiled it for you, knowing the result right at the beginning! Truth be told, it was never going to be much of a race – but I didn’t know that at the beginning.

Recently, I was told a story a company, a large and well-known company, with a recently discovered supply chain issue. The issue had been hidden and overlooked as a result of working in silos; and a process that was designed from the inside-out – without understanding the impact on the overall customer experience. They had set a customer expectation of acknowledging correspondence within five days, and were very pleased to be working to an internal service level of two days.

Ignore for a moment the potential cost implication of resourcing to deliver a service level significantly better than the customer expectation or whether a customer would think five days turnaround a great service in these days of ‘instant’ messaging, and consider how pleased with themselves they were at exceeding the expectations on a routine basis.

Sadly, the customers were not so pleased as the correspondence was not being received even in five days, much less two! And what was the root cause? Well, the “dumb thing” was a contract with an outsourced fulfilment company which included a seven day service level for despatch of correspondence – ouch!

Bill Price and David Jaffe in their book The Best Service Is No Service talk about the idea of ‘stapling’ yourself to an issue when looking at customer journeys. Actually following the route through the (extended) organisation to fully understand the end-to-end customer experience. Clearly, this had not been done when this process was designed.

That story started last week and the poor customer is probably still waiting for their acknowledgement!

Contrast that with a phone call today to Axa Sun Life today. I needed a form to report the loss of a policy document. I got through immediately, was transferred promptly after the initial triage of my call and was answered immediately again!

The agent immediately understood what was needed and offered, yes offered, to email the form to me – and it arrived promptly. The whole experience took about five minutes.

Simple, well-designed, smart service – a winner every time!

brilliant basics, customer experience, dumb things, financial services | No Comments

Posted by: admin | 9.04.2009

Gill Montia, reporting recently in an Insurance Daily article, discusses a worrying trend – that the handling of consumer complaints is actually getting worse, with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) reporting increasing numbers of consumers getting “dismal” treatment. The FOS suggests that this is a symptom of “weary cynicism” on the part of firms in the financial services industry. Well, in my experience, many organisations – across all industries – want to ignore complaints, and consider them a necessary evil; giving them scant consideration and overlooking the huge intrinsic value in listening to customers. So this is not a new phenomenon.From the ombudsman’s perspective, there is increasing evidence of regulated firms not properly assessing cases – resulting in increased, and inappropriate, referrals. This is a worrying trend given the emphasis over recent years on Treating Customers Fairly. Whilst it is true to say that financial organisations are facing massive business problems, that is no reason to ignore customers – retention must be a priority in the current economic circumstances with new customers hard to find.Plans by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to publish league tables of individual firm’s performance and the recent statements around closer and more intrusive regulation, give hope that the interests of complainants may (forcibly) become central to firms’ customer strategies. But if history is anything to go by, with the majority of firms it is only a very faint hope …. competitive differentiation through excellence in customer experience (including complaint management) may never have been easier!illustration courtesy of Whotheheckareyou.

complaint, customer experience, financial services | No Comments