Poor banking service

Yesterday, when doing some much needed filing, I realised I only like one of the services my current bank provides for me: the pre-punched holes in my bank statements. Other than that, Lloyds TSB have been appalling bad with their service.

This is not an uncommon story with high street banks such as Lloyds. A 2008 study into UK consumer satisfaction with banks found that credit unions and co-operatives scored better with consumers than did the large retail banks (JD Power, 2008). Perhaps this is because personal customer service seems to be a key selling point of the smaller organisations. What Lloyds, and all of the other high street banks need to realise is that good customer service is the key to their business, especially if we are to believe that more people will tell of a bad experience than they will of a good one (Howcroft, 1991)*.

Anita Chakrabarty from the University of Nottingham has written a paper outlining factors which influence customer satisfaction with banking services. You can read it here. In the paper, Chakrabarty lists five salient points for banking service design gathered from other papers:

1. Service quality is one of the effective means in building a competitive position in the service industry. (Lewis, 1993)
2. Investments in service quality, customer satisfaction and customer relationships leads to profitability and market share (Rust and Zahorik, 1993)
3. High quality service and customer satisfaction often results in more repeat purchases and market share improvements (Buzzel and Gale, 1997)
4. Customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty and this leads to profitability ( Hallowell, 1996)
5. The costs of customer acquisition are much higher than the costs of retention (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990).

One interesting service I have just come across is the Bank of You from the Union Bank and Trust Company in the US. The experience from the outset is very human-centered. You begin your registration by giving the bank your name:

The widget then takes the customer through the process of finding the right account structure for them by way of some very simply worded questions:

After about 5 or 6 screens, the customer is presented with a summary sheet which contains product suggestions, brand and ATM locations, and the opportunity to speak with an online banker about your account. At this stage, all the personal data that’s been asked of you is your name and the addresses of a few key locations in your life (home, office, local shops) to ascertain where the best local branches are for you.

The design of the site is simple and follows some basic UX and information design principles. For example, the customer always knows where they are in the process by way of breadcrumbing and the subtle use of ‘hinting’, where the previous and next screens are shown at the edges of the screen. The restricted colour palette allows for the customer’s eye to be directed to important instructional text with ease: the dark blue and the red stand out.

Whether this simple and elegant design for the online service translates to their face-to-face customer experience I cannot say, but compared to the online sites of high street banks such as Lloyds, you can really see that the Bank of You considers the customer experience to be of primary importance. They do not overload the customer with sales notices. They give the customer the information that is required as it is needed, and nothing more. The simplify the process without making the customer feel inadequate. A job well done.

* Howcroft, J.B. (1991) Customer Satisfaction in Retail Banking. In The Service Industries Journal, Volume 11, Issue 1. pp 11-17.

Good language is part of the experience

There are plenty of great examples on the web of how companies use certain styles of language to brand their customer’s experience. This is one I came across recently in on Pattern Tap: an irreverent take on the usually boring ID process that doesn’t, I think, take away from the seriousness of the sign in process. Perhaps it would not be appropriate say for a company with an older audience for whom carding might be a long-forgotten experience, but for a younger audience, I think this language is spot on.

I am working on a job at the moment that requires a user to sign in before redeeming loyalty benefits. The problem is that the  company’s standard sign in is dry, and completely lacking in any of the character that the company is known for.  I am hoping to get a chance to talk to those responsible and urge them to vamp up their sign in process a little.

A break in transmission

Apologies for the severe lack of posting. I have started a new job and just can’t seem to find the time to blog. I hope this will settle down in the next couple of weeks.

I am also enjoying attending design events in London, something I didn’t have the chance to do when living in Reading. Last week I went to St. Bride’s Library to listen to Paul Stiff and colleagues talk of their research into 19th century information design. They are looking at how people used to read information for action, a difficult task as it is not the kind of reading that many people have written about. There is a related exhibition at the library full of timetables, maps, tables and forms.

The ‘indicator’ map below is part of the exhibition. I saw this in a class given by Michael Twyman at Reading University last year. The tape measure is used to find any street with accuracy. Note the numbers along the sides of the map and the lines that would be used to line up the tape. Lining up a set of numbers listed after a street in the index would allow users to find the street.

Next week some UX folks from Google are speaking at a UX UPA event at the Truman Brewery. Very much looking forward to that. You can read more about that event on the UX UPA Eventbrite page.