Banking: A Service desert

Good service from a customer perspective is one of the key reasons for choosing a bank. Within the other hand, banks will usually understood under the service counter area unpleasant. Accordingly, often the large gap between the experienced and the service is promised at banks.

Googling for you "service in banks", we get a lot of evidence of poor service. If you ask friends or acquaintances on the service experience at banks, so the picture looks not much different: Mostly criticism, little praise. The concept of "Service desert Germany" seems to be created for banks.

Customer engagement as a central objective

It has long been proven that good service and business success are closely positively correlated. Two important keywords and gradually make it clear this place in the banking sector by: Customer Engagement and Customer Experience.
 
Under Customer Engagement is the ability to inspire customers. From a Harvard study , we know that this can lead to an increase in customer profitability by over 20%.

Customer Experience, also a term from the Harvard Business School is known, a company's ability to bring about all the sales channels of communication and positive experiences that make a crucial difference from a customer perspective in the competition.

To bank customers to inspire positive experience high service quality is an important if not crucial. And this is where banks do all confessions, despite often difficult.

Is the term "Service" burned?

A few years ago thought about it a major German bank to introduce a different concept for their stores. They tried something new and more meaningful.

These include surveys were conducted and reviewed various term variants for approval and acceptance by customers and employees. From the perspective of the bank it was hoped above all to the term "advisory branch." Clear favorite was from a customer perspective but the term "Service branch". Unfortunately, this was also the term with the worst approval rating among the employees.

Even if this action is a long time ago and has not yet implemented this, but it reveals the problems of the term "service" in the banking sector.

The term "service" for bank employees often have little "value". Do you mean by "service" in short and simplified "counter service" and want it most as quickly as possible away.

Bank customers "love" good service

For customer service, however is something important, and often something crucial. Good or bad service makes for a lot of customers from the difference between a good and a bad bank.

This is especially true because products have become more or less interchangeable. A global study by management consultancy Bain from 2010 to approximately 90,000 individuals were interviewed, says that service was the deciding factor for a retail bank.

Product range and the level of charges on the other hand are secondary. The study comes to three key findings:

1. Service quality determines satisfaction and loyalty of bank customers
2. Banks with a high number of loyal customers are more successful and cheaper to refinance
3. In a survey of about 90,000 residential customers direct banks cut the best and the worst performing large branch banks

One of the authors of the study, combined, for example, respondents with the term "service" that you will be greeted when you walk into a bank branch. Many bank customers would sometimes feel, however, to interfere with the entry . Notably, this would apply to wealthy clients.
 
Nothing new. Already in 2007, came a study by Booz Allen Hamilton to similar results. Frightening, is that banks seem to learn little from these results apparently.

Customers have certainly supports clear ideas about what they associate with good and poor service:

Characteristics of good and bad customer service from bank perspective

Actually, the above points should make it a particular challenge to banks.

All the more so, why banks not change that. Or do they communicate their good service not only right for the customer?
 
Or, as Jim Bush (Executive Vice President, Services at American Express) expressed on the Forrester's Customer Experience Forum 2011 is: "Treat the customer as you would like to be treated."
 
What do you mean? They have particularly good or particularly bad experiences in the service of the banks do? Whether as customer or as an employee, tell us of it here.

Customer Service versus Fraud Management

Ooops! Accidents will happen but sometimes they may not be what they seem.

Price and customer service have always been the two biggest influencers behind the purchase of insurance, and insurance companies are seeing this trend increase significantly. This is partly as a result of current tough economic conditions and partly from the emergence and availability of new distribution channels for customers.

Insurance companies can offer very little by way of flexibility on pricing structures, and the provision of enhanced or better customer service is an issue facing increased scrutiny in the boardroom.

Also, insurers are facing an ongoing battle against insurance fraud - an issue that according to the ABI, costs the industry $1.6bn a year.

The need to provide policyholders with an efficient and positive claims experience, as well as managing fraud effectively, has proved to be a big challenge for the industry in recent years as fraud increases and fraudsters become more sophisticated.

Forensic Psychology
Since the introduction of forensic psychology to the insurance market in 2001, the adoption of 'cognitive interviewing' has grown rapidly as a means of detecting honesty and combating fraud in a more empathetic way. Perhaps its success is not surprising because this is a common sense approach to comfortably extracting information, which complements the service delivered to the genuine policyholder.

Cognitive Interviewing
Cognitive interviewing is a system which incorporates a number of key components. Since 2001, when it was introduced into the insurance industry, cognitive interviewing has been further refined.

Today, it draws on advanced forensic psychology, behavioural psychology, advanced conversation management, communication techniques and experience, in identifying and anticipating fraud trends.

Rapid Detection of Honesty
The key is to identify honesty rapidly, and fast tack genuine claims through to settlement whilst simultaneously pinpointing fraud and extracting the evidence to robustly repudiate such claims.

The methodology has also evolved to cater for, and manage, claim volumes with no loss of service or fraud identification. Commercial advantage can consequently be realised in terms of cost and the ability to ramp up the service as required. This is a real bonus.

FSA Regulations
As well as helping to enhance the customer service experience during the claims process, cognitive interviewing can also play an intrinsic role in supporting FSA regulations and TCF guidelines.

The methodology of obtaining information at the outset of a claim rather than weeks or months down the line when it has been flagged as high risk, is a natural complement to best practice and TCF guidelines. The cognitive process leads to early decisions with no need to keep referring back to various parties for additional information.

The industry as a whole recognises that working collaboratively is vital to combating fraud, yet historically there has been a deep mistrust between brokers and insurers in handling suspected fraudulent claims.

BIBA Survey
In last year's BIBA survey, it was reported that insurers tend to bypass brokers when dealing with suspicious claims because they feel they are obstructive when it comes to identifying fraudulent policyholders. Brokers, meanwhile, have concerns about the impact of fraud investigations on policyholders' customer service aligned to the claims experience.

Fraud Detection Tool
Forensic psychology as a fraud detection tool can help brokers and insurers to work together in collaboration throughout this sensitive process. Cognitive interviewing meets the needs of both insurer and broker alike, enabling a joined up approach which drastically reduces claims spend in relation to fraud whilst simultaneously delivering strong customer service to policyholders.

Protecting the Bottom Line
This joined up approach shields genuine policyholders from the additional costs of fraud, supporting FSA guidelines, whilst at the same time protecting the bottom line of both broker and insurer businesses. Policyholders value the fact that they are being protected from unnecessarily high premiums through the proactive pursuit of fraud and the swift resolution of genuine claims is a powerful reputation booster.

The significance for insurers of adopting empathetic methods of fraud management that will impact positively on both customer service and the bottom line cannot be overestimated and
this is a trend that is definitely here to stay.

On of the more popular versions of this Fraud Detection system is Absolute's Flatline

Facebook and Twitter both Hit by Targetted Denial of Service (DoS) Attack

On an otherwise normal and happy Thursday morning, Facebook and Twitter both became the most recent high profile sites to be the target of a denial of service attack (DoS).

A Georgian blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google's Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial of service attack that led to the site-wide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive.

The blogger, who uses the account name "Cyxymu", the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia, had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook said.

Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and the usual online services provided to customers.

Twitter. 'We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate.'

Facebook: "We have restored full access for most people," the company reported. "We’ll keep monitoring the situation to make sure you have the reliable experience you expect from us.