Banks Missing out on Tweeting Customers

Research by Virgin Media Business into customer service levels among Britain's biggest banks has found that while they're making significant progress in the call centre, there's still room for improvement.

Despite investing heavily in pioneering e-banking services, the majority of banks are missing out on opportunities to strengthen relationships with customers online.

The study also revealed that banks seem to be prioritising calls from business customers, answering calls to business help lines a third faster than their consumer equivalents.

The study found that calls from business customers were answered fastest in just 61 seconds. Banks took at least 30 seconds longer to answer calls from consumers. Urgent calls from people whose bank card had been lost or stolen were answered in one minute and seven seconds. The average waiting time for calls across consumer and business help lines was 74 seconds according to the study by Virgin Media Business.

Researchers found that the best performing bank answered customer calls in just 34 seconds on average. The same bank also boasted the country's speediest pickup time, answering one call in just seven seconds. This was more than 47 times faster than the UK's slowest bank, which took a staggering five minutes and 33 seconds.

Virgin Media Business' Customer Service Study also discovered that the UK's biggest high street banks are missing out on thousands of opportunities a month to connect with their customers online. It revealed that Britain's high street banks are being tweeted about 180 times a day on average. Yet, despite a growing number of businesses using social networks as customer service channels, Virgin Media Business found that only one highstreet bank has launched a Twitter account to monitor and respond to their customer's conversations.

Phil Stewart, customer service director at Virgin Media Business said, "Britain's biggest banks have made a lot of progress over the last few years, significantly improving the experience that customer's get when phoning their call centres. However our study shows that this drive to improve customer service hasn't spread online. Despite more than five million people in the UK signing up to Twitter, we found that only one bank has started to engage with its customers on the site.

"Whether you like it or not, social networking sites seem to be becoming the new sounding board for complaints about companies. In fact, research by the Institute of Customer Service recently found that nearly a tenth of Brits expect businesses to have a presence on Twitter. With the country's high street banks being tweeted about 180 times a day on average, responding to customers on the web is clearly going to be challenging. But with 55 per cent of people in the UK expecting a response to an online complaint within 24 hours, it's a challenge that the banks need to take up.

"Smart organisations are beginning to realise that a call centre isn't the only way to provide customer service. Customers now want to get in touch with businesses via email, Instant Messaging and social networking sites too. To handle this plethora of inbound enquiries, companies need to take a multi-channel approach to their customer service. Investing in the right technology and training will allow firms to respond to their customers quickly and consistently, regardless of how they choose to get in touch."

About the research

Average call waiting times are based on a study of five phone calls to each of the banks help lines for business and consumer customers, and to report lost/stolen cards.

The average daily volume of tweets was calculated by recording Twitter mentions for all seven banks during one working week, and working out the average volume of tweets for one bank during one day.

Companies surveyed included Lloyds TSB, Barclays, Santander, Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, HSBC and the Co-operative Bank. The Research was conducted during office hours on w/c 5 July 2010.
 

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