What does it say about a bank when the easiest and least “customer-effort” transaction is closing an account? I’ll leave you to ponder what the right answer to that question should be, and limit myself to telling you the story.
Despite the evidence to the contrary, I continue to believe that companies do actually take notice of the world around them and try to learn from the best of their competitors / peers. I guess that makes me a “glass half full” kind of person. Even so, I should not have been surprised by my recent experience with a UK online bank.
Like everyone else, I am keen to find any kind of reasonable return from my (admittedly modest) savings. This has been tough over the last couple of years with low rates of interest. Like many others, I have been tempted by the special 12 months bonus rate offers and opened such an account in late 2009.
The bank in question was then a new venture from a well-established UK financial institution, perhaps best known for it’s insurance products. When they decided to create an entirely online banking arm, I am sure they studied the existing providers. After all, Internet banking is hardly a new phenomenon any more.
But, if they did study competitors or best practice, they were not good students because the result was an all-too typically appalling customer experience. The initial account opening process was not too awful, although my memory is of too many things arriving in the post in a rather disjointed fashion. But I cannot be sure that is an entirely fair assessment as I am aware how much negative overlay might have been added by later, worse interactions.
I have only needed to transact on the account three times (it is, after all, for savings) – twice to transfer money in and, a few days ago, to transfer some out. Because of the infrequency of use, I could not remember all of the relevant security information to gain access. I was okay with remembering two of the needed three pieces of information – unique customer ID, online password and PIN – but could never remember all three.
The fail-safe security design meant that the account was blocked after three failed attempts … an action about which I have very mixed feelings. I can understand that it is a good thing to limit the vulnerability of accounts to being ‘hacked’ – and applaud that. But, at the same time, the risk has to be balanced with how the experience is managed for valid but forgetful customers.
Other organisations providing secure commercial online transactions have long ago figured out how to help customers recover their security information via self-service. This not only allows the customer to complete the interactions quickly and efficiently, it also reduces the workload on customer services staff. Indeed Amazon has had this cracked for about ten years now. (As a n aside, I am not sure that ‘cracked’ is a good choice of word in this context …)
But, in the case of this bank, no such luck. Hope was raised initially with a ‘Forgotten your password?’ hyperlink, but dashed when clicking this link only produced this onscreen message:
“Please contact our Customer Services Team for assistance on 0845 xxx xxxx (our opening hours are: Mon, Tue, Thurs, Fri 08:00-18:00 Wed 10:00-18:00).”
Now, that was doubly frustrating. Not only could I not help myself, but I could not get help at all at that time (Saturday afternoon). And they all have a nice lie-in on Wednesdays! Actually, given the way I felt at that point, I could understand that their agents are probably exhausted and stressed-out having to deal with irate customers all day. So much for making banking accessible 24 x 7 on the Internet.
By Monday morning, my anger had escalated to the extent that I had decided not to transfer some money any more, but rather to transfer all of the money and close the account (but you knew that was coming already, didn’t you?). I mentally steeled myself for the inevitable conversation with the customer retentions team and dialled. Only three options on the IVR (good!), of which one was to close an account. After choosing that option, and while I waited to be answered, I mused on the possible reasons why the closure option had such prominence. Part of me hoped it was in order to get defecting customers to the specialist recovery team as quickly as possible, but my suspicion was that the decision was more prosaic – it was simply happening a lot.
Still, I anticipated some attempt to retain my business; even if only to offer me the current ‘special deal’ for new customers. But no. Nothing. Not even a question as to why I wanted to close the account. In fact, the whole call – from dialling, through holding on for a reply, to having confirmation of the balance being transferred and the date it would get to the bank – took less time than it has taken you to read this blog post! Super efficient, but a super-wasted opportunity to hear my perspective on the dumb things being done by this company to their customers.
