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The study, commissioned by IBM and KANA Software, comes at a time when financial institutions are looking for new ways to improve the customer experience and serve a growing population of younger customers who increasingly interact with businesses through e-mail, chat and the Web.

The study, “Online Customer Service: International Financial Services. KANA and IBM” revealed significant shortcomings in the online customer service experience, with many top British banks and building societies offering only limited web self-service options and failing to respond to email queries.

Available online channels 

Researchers conducted a mystery shopping study of 52 major financial services companies across the UK and Germany.

They tested the quality of online customer service offered by each organisation by attempting to find the answer to a typical customer query through the available online channels.

These included any help facilities offered on the companies’ websites and, where available, customer service email channels.

Simple queries were used, such as “What savings accounts do you offer? What are the interest rates?” or “How do you ensure that the internet banking you provide is secure?”.

In the UK, 53 per cent  of financial institutions failed to correctly answer a simple enquiry through any online channel, either providing an incorrect answer or no answer at all.

Meanwhile over a third (35 per cent) of those surveyed did not provide a contact email address on their website and almost a fifth (18 per cent) did not respond to an email enquiry at all.

Mystery shopping exercise 

The study revealed opportunities for banks to significantly upgrade their online experience by blending communication channels with knowledge capabilities to provide customers with consistent, accurate answers.

While a majority of the UK companies had websites that gave contact telephone numbers (97 per cent) and multiple contacts (74 per cent); few provided modern communication methods such as web-forms (53 per cent), and none provided a web-chat option

The mystery shopping exercise also reveals that more work needs to be done to provide channels that protect modern consumers; with only 29 per cent of banks surveyed providing encrypted and secure communication channels and over two-thirds providing non-encrypted communication; leaving consumers vulnerable to online theft and cyber eavesdropping.

With regards to speed and accuracy of response, 47 per cent of UK banks and building societies provided a satisfactory response; with a woeful 53 per cent of companies unable to answer the test query via online channels.

The survey rated the companies on the breadth of online customer channels they offered, and the quality of responses received in those channels.

Mediocre score for web self-service 

Based on the response to the customer query, the survey found that UK companies had a mediocre score for web self-service with the majority of companies scoring between three and six out of ten.

Marchai Bruchey, chief marketing officer at KANA says he is surprised at the poor level of customer service revealed by the study, especially with UK banks and building societies being so reliant on a superior customer experience to differentiate their brands.

With internet access in nearly 16 million UK households, Bruchev believes there is growing consumer demand for a quality online experience, and more consistency between Web and branch.

“Any business that ignores online communication channels does so at their peril – in the competitive world of retail banking, this is especially true,” he adds.

Eddie Keal, Financial Services Team Leader at IBM said that firms that enable customers to easily answer their own questions online using searchable FAQs and convenient Web 2.0 capabilities such as social networking software and live chat can increase customer satisfaction and cross-selling opportunities.

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Related links

• IBM
• KANA Software