Like everyone else I watch in dismay as Bank Of America (BoA) suffers floods of poor customer service comments, especially across the social media space. These poor reviews are especially beloved by consultants who like to pick on BoA with story after story of how their customer service is sub optimal (I believe the usual technical term is “sucks”).
So in the interests of helping provide a fair and balanced commentary for the “consulting breed” I had a couple of experiences recently with our friends at BoA that deserves some attention because:
- It illustrates how good BoA can be as a multichannel service provider and how when they get it right it helps build customer loyalty.
- It’s always nice to be nice for a change. (I live in the Southern USA where we like that)
- It clearly indicates where BoA can go in its multichannel customer interaction roadmap, items that really aren’t all that complicated and how close they might be to getting it right.
- Since like everyone the next step in multichannel for BoA is obviously for a social media strategy I think Social Banking could be one of the most exciting things for BoA to improve their community relationships.
Open Declaration #1 – I have been a BoA customer since I arrived in the USA in 1990 fresh from UK and Ireland (started with C&S, then Nationsbank and then BoA) and I have had great, good and not so good experiences with them.
BoA Cares About Customers – Protecting Customers From Themselves (this of course was not me .. couldn’t be !) Someone went to online billpay at “bankofamerica.com” recently and typed $5739.00 in a billpay line instead of $57.39. About 3 hours later I (oops sorry .. the customer) get a “low balance for your checking account” cellphone text message alert from Bank Of America, clicks through to my (oops their !) account on my (their) iPad to look at the transactions list (accompanied by some choice comments to my wife about “the fools at BoA”) and dials their 1-800 number to complain.
The young lady (Sheryl if I remember correctly but I am probably wrong) carefully explained to me where the problem was (not once did she use the word “idiot”, I have others around me to helpfully fill in that observation) and offered to make the adjustment back into my account in the next day’s financial cycle to undo my error (being in the industry I may be a little more accepting of the 24 hour multi layered, multi-company computer processing cycles than some), She also worked some magic on the account to avoid the sky falling in on my when my checking account went severely in the red the following morning and had the decency to ask me “what else she could do for me” and add a little humor about my mistake which I appreciated. My comment to my wife after a 30 minute phone call with BoA was “I love these guys . I don’t know why everyone complains so much” .. Kerching !
It has been my experience that Bank Of America’s service has been getting better over the past few years despite the noise, not that they haven’t had their crisis moments with me.
Having Said Those Nice Things It Is Very Frustrating To Me That I Have Never Had Either Of The Following Experiences With Bank Of America
ING Direct – Preemptive Customer Actions To Build Customer Loyalty – I will tell you that the customer relationship folks at ING Direct are one of my favorite examples of how to “build customer loyalty right”. It’s not the tools or technology, it’s their style. My favorite story recently is that I got an email from ING Direct offering me to refinance a mortgage I hold. I called them just for amusement to see what they might have to say prepared to get annoyed about all the fees and paperwork it would involve. Stunningly, since the offer involved them reducing the interest rate I was paying by about 25% (which means someone income goes down by 25%) there were almost no costs involved in doing so and almost no paperwork. The person on the phone said “you are our customer already so if we are not changing the mortgage amount why would we need a new appraisal and all that paper stuff or charge you a bunch of fees” and offered me a 30 minute process to execute. Note – they called me to reduce their own revenue (or at least their financial mortgage partner’s revenues) in a quick and easy manner. Not one of my credit card companies or other financial institutions has called me with such an offer, I call them. Kudos to Capital One for not having changed the ING Direct experience since they acquired them earlier in 2011.
Fidelity Investments – Multichannel, Multifaceted, MultiBrilliant – So it isn’t enough that Fidelity is one of the few financial services companies I deal with that has an “Instant Message A Rep” option prominently displayed and lets me “Chat” about my accounts while I am watching American Idol in the evenings and can actually move me from an IM/ Chat to a phone conversation without losing the thread of / knowledge of the discussion BUT they also have retail stores with some of the most helpful folks around. Talk about supporting my channel choice. And it really pays since I have been moving an increasing percentage of my retirement investments in their direction.
Can BoA Become “Social Community BoA” – So with Social Media moving rapidly into all forms of life this begs the issue of what the impact of “Social Banking” will be. I know the banking community are still figuring out the privacy and information sharing issues around Social Media but to me there is a huge opportunity for brands like Bank Of America to return to the community bank of yesterday (their roots). It used to be bankers were one of the key enablers of a town or community, especially for small businesses. Community banks often still are but the “megabanks” like BoA have lost much of this local touch. I can see an opportunity for a “personal banker” at Bank Of America to build a Facebook community of small businesses in my zip code, for example, encouraging those people to work together and building an ever stronger bond between the BoA brand and the community members.
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