How do UK banks’ websites treat worried customers?

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.

Customer promises: make them simple, tangible and authentic

A customer experience partly depends on the expectations the firm is setting about doing business with them. Low expectations + great experience = surprised. High expectations + poor experience = disappointed. One way firms set expectations is by creating a set of customer promises. For example, Budget operates with their ‘Reservation Promises’,  the Co-operative bank has a ‘Five Star Promise’, and JetBlue ’Bill of Rights’.

Recently I came across two sets of ‘7 Guarantees’ from two completely different (Dutch) firms — one is an insurer (Unive) and the other one is a grocer (Jumbo). The difference is huge.

The Seven Guarantees of Unive:

1. Low premium. ‘We regularly decrease our premiums. In the last two years this happened six times.’
2. Best price/quality ratio. ‘We also raise the quality of our insurance products. Research has shown that at Unive you get the most out of your insurance’.
3. Fast settlement of repair work. ‘In the event of damage, Unive offers excellent and quick settlement in Holland and abroad, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week’. 
4. Competent advice. ‘With 150 offices across the country personal and clear advice is always closeby’.
5. 15% discount on the complete package. ‘At Unive you can have all your insurances at one place — easy, clear and beneficial: you get 15% discount on our Advantage Plan.’
6. Most-respected insurer. According to research we are the most-respected insurer in the Netherlands. For years we are reliable’. 
7. Easy termination service. ‘Do you have insurances somewhere else? We make it easy to switch to us with the Unive Cancellation Service.’

The Seven Guarantees of Jumbo:

1. Euros cheaper. When a customer finds a product that is permanently cheaper at a different grocer, you get it for free.
2. Fresh is really fresh. When you find a product with today or tomorrow as expiration date, you can take the product – with the right expiration date – home for free.
3. Quick shopping. If you are the fourth person in the cashier’s queue, you get all your shopping for free.
4. Service with a smile. Can’t find a product? Staff walks with you until it’s found.
5. For all your products.  If a product is missing, Jumbo will order it for you and replenishes it within 2 weeks.
6. Your wishes are key. Every complaint, tip or idea is a chance to win 1 minute free shopping.
7. Not happy? Money back. When a customer is not happy about a product, the Service Desk will replace it with a new product and you get your money back.

To which firm would you bring your money? Unive is using vague, uninspiring language with their Seven Guarantees. Replace Unive with a different insurer and most of these guarantees still work. None of their Guarantees is tangible. They don’t give consumers an idea what happens when we don’t get quick service or competent advice. Jumbo on the other hand gives simple promises that resonate with customers. They are also very credible because the firm tells customers what they need to do in the event of a broken promise. You can’t fake authenticity.

Unive should look at – the troubled – Fortis who puts money where their mouth is. First of all they publish their Service Guarantees online. Secondly, they are simple to understand and made credible by telling what customers get when a bad experience occurs. In the case of Fortis, when you lost your credit card and you haven’t received a new one within 24 hours, Fortis will put 5 Euros on your account. Can’t reach the Claim Service? 5 Euros.  

BCG: Many of the most innovative firms innovate by creating unique customer experiences

Interesting findings from a Boston Consulting Group survey of senior managers/executives. The three most innovative global firms by number of votes are: Apple, Google, and Toyota Motor. [Noticed the names are the same as the leaders of the Q2 2008 American Customer Satisfaction Index?] To weigh down the ‘voting’, 20% of the ranking is determined by three-year revenue growth, three-year margin growth, and three-year shareholder return.

• Unique customer experiences is a key output of innovation. 15 of the most innovative firms get this status because they designed unique customer experiences that create loyalty. Breakthrough products is still the main manifestation of innovation.
• Developing a deep understanding of customers is firms’ best performing innovation capability. This finding is worrying. So, most executives think their firms know their customers well enough to be able to innovate through breakthrough products or services, or through applying a differentiated business model. I’ve seen too many (dis)satisfaction surveys where customers don’t feel understood by the companies they hold products from to believe that executives are wrong here.
• A risk-adverse culture is the main obstacle to ROI on innovation. The other primary obstacles are lengthy development times, difficulties selecting the right ideas to commercialize, and lack of coordination internally. A quarter mentioned they don’t have enough customer insight – obstacle number 5. Huh? So, managers believe that getting deep understanding of customers is the best performing process behind innovating, but a lack of customer insight is a key reason why innovation is not happening. Sounds like research and marketing don’t have lunch together!
• Customer satisfaction is the number one measure for innovation success. Second is percentage of sales from new products or services and third overall revenue growth.

Download the full report here.

Obstacles to improve the customer experience

Quickly: Medium-sized and large European firms lack process, vision, and internal cooperation to improve their customer experience (CE).

CE is important to firms strategies, but they are not disciplined about it.

I thought I share some of my researching findings from earlier this year: findings from a survey of 101 managers with customer experience management (CEM) responsibilities at European firms with annual revenue of $100 million or more . (The Forrester report is called “Obstacles To Customer Experience Success 2008, Europe”.)

• Unsurprisingly, 9 out of 10 firms believe customer experience (in the simplest way defined as ‘how a company interacts with customers’) plays an important or critical role in the firm’s overall strategy for 2008. 
• 3 out of 10 firms describe their CEM practices as undisciplined.

The lack of discipline shows up by low adoption rates of some key customer experience activities.

• Two-thirds of surveyed firms do not have a company-wide program to improve the experience and service across channels
• Almost a third doesn’t have a single set of customer feedback scores

In terms of day-to-day management, the top 3 obstacles to improving the customer experience are:

1. Lack of cooperation across organizations
2. Lack of a clear customer experience strategy
3. Lack of CEM processes. 

Interestingly, $1B+ companies lack customer understanding significantly more than smaller firms.

Earlier I referred to the six laws of customer experience. One law is that employees are “motivated to do what is measured, rewarded, and celebrated”. Data in this research shows that this is a serious problem for European firms: only a third of firms agree with the statement that employees across the company are recognized and rewarded for improving the experience of target customers.

In terms of customer experience investments, the top 5 items that firms are planning to spend more on in 2008 compared to 2007 are:

1. Web analytics
2. Customer behavioral research
3. Customer satisfaction research
4. Usability labs
5. Focus groups

Only a quarter of firms plan to invest in more services from design and marketing agencies.

My tips:

• Find out where CE (customer service, product satisfaction) stands now. Most firms don’t know where they are in terms of customer success. Just last week we got a request from a large telco to determine the quality of their call center — they had no clue. So, review the experience of your two groups of clients: your customers and your employees.
• Determine where you want to be in two years. Analyze your industry’s future and study what products and services matter to your customers. (Research tip: keep asking the why question until they are fed up with the interview/survey/test.) Interview employees what works and what doesn’t work internally and externally (where they think customers are let down). Then, articulate your experience strategy. Chances are high you need to look at and reengineer your business processes, not just build a pretty-looking website.  Ron at Marketing Whims just wrote a great post about this.

My two cents. I’m interested in your comments!

Online Banking 2.0: Three things Qash must do to be really useful

Qash is will be a Dutch community website that allows people to better understand how they spend their money. People can share tips or give advice to each other how to make better financial decisions. Another component is that people are able to create financial goals and track how well they do in reaching them. By uploading your bank statements from your main bank(s), and categorizing / tagging expenses, you can compare your spending with others. It is basically the Dutch Wesabe, Mint, or Geezeo.

To give subscribers the best experience, Qash should:

• Allow people to compare against peers, not just everybody. To understand better how I am doing financially, I’d prefer to compare my spending with people who have similar demographics such as education, income and age. I am not really interested how big the monthly mortgage payment is of fifty-year-olds or how many Euros teenagers put aside every month. I am curious to know the percentage of people with similar age and income who invest more than me and how this impacts the speed in which I reach my financial goals (just like Pertuity’s Dare To Compare function).
• Give proactive advice. Qash would really rock if it can make us all smarter in making financial decisions. From my research at Forrester I know that just 4 out of 10 consumers like to do their own research before making any financial purchase. The main reason is that financial services is a boring, difficult and tricky topic — still a lot of consumers simply don’t trust banks and insurers. Qash has therefor a great opportunity to link community-generated tips and ‘did you know’s?’ to my personal situation. So, alert me when more and more people are buying their TVs at MediaMarkt, or recommend opening a savings account at a specific firm when you see my account balance grow with a certain amount each month.
• Build tools that are useful. Useful means a) tell me how I am doing and b) what I should be doing to improve. Just last week someone pointed me to Barclays’ new ‘Little Extras Calculator’. Like many other online tools, it looks pretty and is built as a rich-internet application. But – unfortunately also like many tools – it is useless: I’m not getting any smarter, the product recommendations are based on ones of that firm only, and I can’t store what I have done. So, Qash, please create a savings calculator that shows me in one graph the end sum that I can expect when staying with my current bank compared with switching to any other bank.

Banks – are you listening?

QR codes can tie channels together

Even though QR codes scanners are far from mainstream, the codes itself give customer experience managers a technique to tie their service and marketing channels together:

1) Banks: Include a code in paper statements so customers can check their current balance online. Or in case of customer service announcements, display a code on the letter so customers can immediately call for questions.

2) Electronics retailers. Display a code on product shelves that direct shoppers straight to your or another comparison website. If you know you offer competitive prices, don’t fear to demonstrate it.

3) Print advertisers. Show a code in your ad that leads straight to the more interactive campaign’s micro site.

This is the QR code of this blog.

Remember the INK Model?

The (Dutch) INK Model represents a framework developed in the late 80s to evaluate the success of an organization. Although the model was refreshed in 2003, the attention it gets in recent years from press and management teams seems to have faded away.

 

Is the model not working? Probably. If you read the model you will find it is quite an inside-out approach to improving a business. To give some simple evidence, I use Google to see how many times the word ‘customer’ is mentioned at the official website of the INK model.

 

The result? Only 13 times.

 

What it means? Too often companies forget to put the customer central in their quality measurement exercises. If you measure the wrong things, chances are you don’t have an effective customer experience strategy.

September = Conference month. An overview

September is packed with interesting events. An overview.

National.

• September 1. MoMo 7. Mobile business models, analytics, and user experience and usability.
• September 2-5. MobileCHI. Human-Computer Interaction with mobile devices and services.
• September 16. eDay ‘08. For latest trends in online business and marketing. Theme: Open Up.
• September 24-26. PICNIC ‘08. “Three inspiring days of ideas, fun and sensory stimulation in media technology, entertainment, art and science.”
• September 26-27. EuroIA. Quality content around Information Architecture. Theme: Redrawing the Map.

International.

• September 22-24. Design for mobile. Focused on strategy and tactics for user research, product definition, interaction and other design, and usability testing.

If you don’t have any (travel) budget left for the year, consider this one on experience design. It’s free and you can choose your own date.

Did i miss a good event?

User experience contest: Funda versus competitors: 1 – 0 (August 2008)

Earlier I wrote how simple mortgage information is not always present at the sites of the three large banks in the Netherlands.

My search for a property has continued and am now using three large real estate websites Jaap, Funda and Moviqto find a house. I thought I share my findings in a structured way. But first a comparison by reach (powered by Alexa) and search volume (powered by Google Trends).

The goals and criteria

My goal was to find a property close to zip code 1055 in Amsterdam within the price range of €200,000 – €300,000. I’d like to save the search query for next time so I don’t have to narrow down the results each time I visit the site. I’d also like to add properties in a list of favorites.

I categorized my findings based on a set of ‘heuristics’ in different categories. The site gains a point when it helps me getting closer to reaching my goal and a -1 if it doesn’t. [For the record, this is just a short list of tests]

1. Navigation: Reaching your goals in a clear, efficient way.
   • Are menu labels clear?
   • Is the task flow efficient?
2. Usefulness: Receiving value through content and functionality [to reach these goals].
   • Is the functionality available to accomplish my goals?
   • Is the necessary information available?
3. Control: Maintaining control during the interaction.
   • Does the site help me to correct my error(s)?
   • Does the site guide me in completing a set of tasks?
4. Presentation: Laying out pages effectively to support Navigation, Usefulness and Control.
   • Is the size of the text large enough?
   • Are interactive elements consistent?
5. Branding & Aesthetics. Promoting the brand to leave a good impression.
   • Are graphics and functionality on par with the brand image?
   • Does the site offer something new?

Results: Funda leads the pack

In the spirit of the Olympics, here is the result:

 

Gold: Funda.nl +6. Strong points: legible text, extensive property information (’street view’), good error prevention and recovery. Deltas: not all required functionality is present, inefficient task flow when searching through map.

Silver: Moviq.nl +0. Strong points: Interesting new ideas (‘flirt with your house’), easiest registration process, good quality pictures, fast download/reaction speeds. Deltas: difficult-to-use map search (due to inaccurate ‘bubbles’), ambiguous category names, and absence of simple property information.

Bronze: Jaap.nl -4. Strong points: no registration required (has several disadvantages as well), RSS feeds. Deltas: Search functionality is oversensitive, hyperlinks are inconsistent, illegible portions of text.

Usability plays a key role in the overall experience

When using these sites I realized that the quality of a site is not purely determined by usability. One house caught my eyes in particular, but after calling the agent it appeared that the property was already sold. The website didn’t tell me this. So, in other words, for finding the best experience we also need to determine the accuracy of the property’s status. I’ll cover this in a different post.

The interaction revolution

Roughly:

• 1600 – 1830: Exchange
• 1830 – 1960: Exchange + Manufactured goods
• 1960 – 1990: Exchange + Manufactured goods + Service
• 1990 – 2005: Exchange + Manufactured goods + Service + Technology
• 2005 – xxxx: Exchange + Manufactured goods + Service + Technology + Interaction

Firms’ competitive advantage more and more starts at learning how to communicate with customers, telling a specific story, and managing well-designed interactions (purchases, questions, complaints, etc).

When is xxxx? What does it trigger? What will be next?