News today that online broker CommSec will consider compensating customers affected by a 30 minute outage on Tuesday shows just how far banks have shifted in the quest to improve customer service.
Perhaps if ANZ’s E*Trade platform had also fallen over CommSec wouldn’t be making the offer. But then again maybe that’s an overly cynical view, given the Commonwealth Bank has been slowly making inroads into improving customer satisfaction and coming good on promises laid down by customer-focused CEO Ralph Norris.
All banking websites experience downtime, usually as the result of upgrades or ongoing maintenance. The real issue is how well the process is managed and the resulting impact on customers when things go wrong and downtime is longer than anticipated.
Customers have become increasingly reliant on Internet banking. Therefore should financial institutions compensate customers who can’t make important transactions due to extended downtime? Many of Westpac’s customers may think so having experienced a downtime period of almost two days in August last year.
An offer of compensation will go a long way towards bridging the loss in confidence and overcoming the frustration caused by downtime, but sometimes all that’s needed is an explanation of why the downtime occurred and what the institution is doing to make sure it’s less likely to happen again.
Contrast this exchange between Westpac PR exec David Lording and ZDNet journalist Munir Kotadia, with this explanation of downtime from Raboplus executive blogger Bryan Inch (see comments section).
The response of customers to these two different cases proves the best way to manage downtime is to be open, transparent and honest.
What do you think? Will customers really be compensated for downtime, given the likely massive cost to CommSec? Should Internet banking users be offered compensation when they are restricted from making important transfers or accessing online funds? Is honesty the best policy, even when the explanation might be damaging to the bank?
Thursday, January 24, 2008
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1 comments:
Charis, I really liked reading this post. I've always thought that we as customers shouldn't ask for more than what we're owed if a mistake has been made. In this case, I don't think customers are owed anything other than fees charged to their account if it was caused by not being able to access online accounts.
I serve as the Community Manager at Banktastic.com, and I posted a link to your article there to see what our members had to say. You can follow it here. Thanks for the good read this morning!
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