The Experience Design Scout

I’m following the ‘credit crisis’ with my CXP hat on, and specifically look at how banks:

• try to keep their customers calm,
• explain what is happening in simple language,
• make it easy for worried customers to talk to someone at the bank.

Because it is hard to find out what instructions employees are getting to comfort customers, or what mail is being sent to customers, I went to the homepages of the top 20 banks in the UK and checked the experience customers are receiving. You can find the screen captures here:

 
From poor to great:

Really bad: icesave (in light of their collapse you’d expect more integrity)

Poor: Barclays, Alliance&Leicester, RBS, citibank, egg, NatWest, Yorkshire Bank, The co-operative bank, smile, Clydesdale Bank, and HSBC. Collectively they are letting down around 50% of UK’s consumers by not giving (quick access to) any information.

Mediocre: Nationwide (two line message that the FSA changed the Compensation Scheme), Lloyds TSB (clear section on the homepage, customer-speak, but language is not specific to the situation), ING Direct (good visual emphasis, but people are redirected to the Dutch Central Bank’s website for more information. Doesn’t show a lot of commitment) and Abbey (hidden links to the right pages with compensation information, and difficult language, but a phone number is presented in context).

Good: First Direct (good use of language, special credit crunch podcast, and invitation to call when customers want) and Halifax/Bank of Scotland (somewhat hidden in ‘Common Enquiries’ section, but good, clear Q&A section on a separate page) and Bradford & Bingley (in a comparable situation as icesave, but much richer information including a CEO message).

Great: No one.

Remarkably, none of the banks is explaining the entire situation and what the source of the problems is. Financial consumers want transparency (PDF, 162Kb), but like in many other situations don’t get this from the banks.