Month: May 2013

I am your Customer

I am your Customer

I may also be your Supplier, your Employee, your Partner, your Student, your Stakeholder, your Consumer, your Influencer or your Citizen.

I reserve the right to voice my opinion about you, your products, your people, your services and my experience with you at any time and across any channel I want.

I reserve the right to be wrong but be treated as if I was right and reserve the right to  accuse you of being wrong, even if you were right.

I expect to be treated as if I was your only customer but I also expect to be treated as the best customer, regardless of whether I may or may not be.

I am your Customer.

However, I reserve the right to go to someone else. It is your job to stop me.

I reserve the right to shop around. It is up to you to make me loyal to your brand.

I reserve the right to expect you to get it right first time, every time even though I realise that nobody is perfect.

I reserve the right not to tell you that though.

I reserve the right to avoid telling you anything about myself although I expect you to know.

I reserve the right to expect the same “deals” as an existing customer as you would to attract new ones.

I am your customer.

I creserve the right to be difficult, annoying, irritable, demanding, irrational and a downright pain in the backside. Sometimes all at once.

However, I am YOUR customer and without me and my fellow customers, you won’t have a business. We know that and expect you to get that.

I am your customer but if you accept me on my terms, I will be your customer for life and will help you achieve your dreams.

 

 

A Banking dichotomy

A recent experience with UBank has got me wondering whether the intention to create a good customer experience has led to a bad experience?

I first want to say that I am not expressing a view in this post, merely an observation. This is in the light of a very good recent experience with UBank who are an Australian Internet bank (part of NAB- National Australia Bank) and an incident with them that may cause me to churn. Hence the dichotomy.

The Internet site is supported by an excellent 24/7 Contact Centre which appears to be very customer centric and well organised. I recently set up my Internet Banking from home using my home broadband connection which uses the only phone line coming into the house. We live in a rural location so have no mobile phone signal at home. When I went to update my personal details online, UBank sent a SMS code for me to enter onto the website to verify the change. Of course, I could not receive the SMS as I had no mobile signal. The SMS was only valid for 10 minutes.

I soon realised that UBank had set up this “security measure” for every single transaction that I would make online. Payments, Transfers, Changes in details all receive SMS verification. With most of the Australian population living in areas with decent mobile coverage, I’m sure this isn’t a common issue to the banking giants but it is to me.

I rang UBank to ask whether there was another option. I was told it is the banks policy to provide this “more secure” method to protect their customers. This is very noble but why couldn’t I receive an email notification instead? Apparently UBank and NAB do not believe this option is as secure so they have adopted the SMS as the standard verification method.

This renders the site useless to me for “home” banking and I am now about to churn. It raises an interesting point though. This initiative has been taken to attempt to protect the customer. It is done with the customer in mind. However, because I have no other options of validation, the approach means that anyone in remote areas of the country will struggle with this issue.

I therefore wonder whether this is an example of good or bad customer centricity? It is good in wanting to make my banking experience safer but bad in that it does not give me the choice in how I want to receive that experience.

I would be interested to know what others think?