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Study Finds Financial Service Firms Need to Invest in Service
I don’t know about you, but I love online banking. I pay bills online, of course, but I’ve also opened accounts online; set up, changed, and cancelled recurring payments; researched account and mortgage options. The works. And in most cases it’s a better experience than the ones I’ve had in the branch. Not because the people aren’t friendly or helpful. It just significantly easier, more convenient, and less time consuming to self-serve.
That said, I, like many other banking customers, like integrated multichannel options. But, according to “Service Done Right: Why Great Online Customer Service Matters More than Ever,” a recent study conducted by IBM and Kana Software, a majority of the 72 financial services firms studied “fell into the lowest quadrant for lack of both the necessary online access channels or for having a channel that was ineffective.”
The companies conducted the study as a “secret shopper” experience, evaluating online self-service; escalation to other channels, including live chat, contact center, email, and online collaboration tools; and the quality of email responses. The financial services firms were plotted in quadrants that charted the quality of contact with the number of available channels. A whopping 71 percent of the firms studied fell into the low quality quadrant, 25 percent exhibited what the researchers considered to be best practices, and a mere 4 percent were cited as providing an excellent experience across channels.
Additionally, the study found that while 95 percent of the websites studied didn’t offer such basic information as what the financial services firms charge for canceling a check or whether a customer can make an insurance claim online, only 6 percent offered the ability to escalate inquiries via email or telephone. And, more than two thirds provided what researchers considered to be unsatisfactory answers to email inquiries.
“The research study confirmed what I had suspected, which was that many companies have implemented multiple channels within their service organizations,” Kana CMO Marchai Bruchey told me. “What surprised me was that such a large number of companies have not integrated their channels offerings. In the financial services industry, where customer retention and cross-sell/upsell opportunities are major growth initiatives, I expect that offering an integrated multichannel experience will become an increasingly important priority.”
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