Letting customers reach out to you!
I recently surveyed to understand how do customers reach out to their banks when they have a query. I would like to share the results of the survey and my understanding of the same.
Context: If you want to know if your bank is working today, how will you find it out?
This survey was shared on Linked-in, in the English language, and in a network influenced by bankers and technologists.
Below is a summary of the survey : How do you speak to your bank?
- 57% preferred to ask Google
- 22% wanted to refer to the app/website
- 13% would have called up the customer care executives
- the rest 7% preferred to visit the nearest branch.
Let me share my understanding of each one of the options.
Visit the nearest branch: 7%
While the option of visiting the nearest branch has received the lowest votes, I believe this would be influenced by the ongoing global pandemic of Covid-19. The context here is if you want to know if the bank is working today or not, a simple answer is to visit the branch and find it out.
While the technologies are advancing and a lot of NEO banks are arising, there is still a section of people who love to visit the branch office.
While I am not surprised, that this is the lowest voted option, one of the participants helped me realize that the results might be flawed because the survey is being organized on linked-in and the language used is English. Also, the post will only be visible to my network which primarily comprises people working in the software and banking industries
There is a section of people (e.g. my parents) who do not feel comfortable with technology and would love to visit the branch itself for a more personalized and warm experience.
I believe in the real world (with or without the pandemic) this number would be higher.
Call up the customer care: 13 %
Customer care centers (CCC) as the name suggests are supposed to be caring for the customers. But being the second-lowest ranker, in a pandemic-affected era reflects truly how these centers have failed to achieve their objectives.
The comments section in the survey re-confirms my opinion that there is a need to rebuild the customer care model. There are quite a few problems with the existing system
Long waiting queue
Because the CCCs are human-powered, there is a limit to scale up with demand. which means long waiting queues and general disappointment of the caller.
Lack of human warmth
CCCs were supposed to be operated by humans, who understand other humans and the bank itself. With this knowledge, they can become a bridge between the customer and the bank.
I feel that the CC executives are no more than script readers. Just refer to the monotone that they use to talk to their customers. Radio jockey Naved actually played a prank on a customer care executive to call this problem out.
[Hindi Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTKsNCjGDOc ]
One pleasant exception to this is American Express. Try calling customer care of any bank, and then call up the American Express call center. You will feel a difference.
Lack of experience
Like everything else, knowledge of banks and serving customers is gained with experience. New people in the industry are bound to be impacted by a lack of experience in finding the correct information. I have personally felt many times that the executive on the phone doesn’t have the full information. It could be because of a lack of documentation, lack of experience, or even a human error. As a result, these problems impact customer experience.
Check the bank’s app/website: 22%
As a software developer, the results of this option were most heartbreaking for me. I read this as :-> Approx. 80% of the people in my tech and banking network feel that the apps or websites we develop are worthless.
I mean, the apps are built by the banks for sharing information with the customers. The banks invest so much in the applications, but for a simple answer “Is the bank working today” people would prefer a third-party system (e.g. Google) more than the app itself.
We are definitely doing something wrong. I would try to understand more and share my findings with you in the upcoming weeks.
The Winner: Ask Google: 57%
Google (or the other search engines) today hold so much information and excel at providing ease and convenience of accessing the information that we tend to trust them more than the original owner of the information.
This option was voted more than all the other options combined. A whopping 57% of the participants preferred convenience over the bank itself.
The magic lies behind the thoughts and efforts Google has invested in user experience. The designs, performance, readability, and human aspects are taken care of. So this is a clear winner!
One of the participants went ahead and mentioned “I prefer checking with my google assistant”. That is indeed a novel and most convenient way of getting the information. You don’t even need to pick up the phone. Just call out loud “ Okay Google” (Or “Alexa” in some cases) and you get answers to your queries. Smooth!
Conclusion
From the survey and the comments, I can clearly deduce that people want convenience and ease of operations.
We can also conclude that the existing channels provided by the banks are lagging behind the channels provided by tech giants like Google.
I hope with these learnings, I am able to develop a solution that brings the banks back into the competition and win in owning their own information.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/letting-customers-reach-out-you-mohit-kanwar/
