Quality and Customer experience
Over the last years, high quality of service and exceptional customer experience have been the Bank’s strategic objectives. In 2016, Bank continued its efforts to strengthen its competitive edge in this area focusing mainly on:
Good understanding of the needs of its clients.
For this the Bank has been using not only traditional qualitative and quantitative studies, but also new approaches such as surveys in the service design processes, UX or user experience and ethnographic studies. Ethnographic studies were applied, among others, last year in our works to develop a new branch format. Concepts of new solutions in the self-service area, new approach to the use of digital devices in branch space and new service model were created and, following pilot implementations in a number of branches, they will be launched in the entire network. When designing novelty solutions the Bank looks for inspiration outside the service sector and follow consumer trends.
Another valuable driver for us is feedback from clients (for instance in the claim review process). For many years there has been inter-department VOC (Voice of Customers) Programme operating in the Bank. In 2016, several dozens of initiatives were developed, many of them to be implemented later. Upon Bank Millennium’s initiative, 15 Polish banks, IT Card and Euronet led to a change in the MasterCard and Visa card regulations in force on the Polish market: chargeback claims times for withdrawals from domestic ATMs were cut down from 45 to 20 days. This allows closing these claims a lot faster.
Designing solutions for appropriate customer experience.
To this end we started to use methods of service design. Solution proposals have been developed in multidisciplinary groups based on the information on customer needs. Next, these proposals are changing into prototypes and tested with clients in order to develop the final solution.
Last year, as part of these projects the Bank implemented, inter alia, the client conversation model for savings and investment products. The model serves as a template for the consultants’ talks held with clients on savings and investments introducing some new tools applied in the conversation. It streamlines and simplifies the dialogue about complex and varied saving and investment products. From the employee’s side, the model guarantees that the conversation and presentation of the Bank’s product offer is conducted in a fair and ethical manner with all the due formalities required by the law. Implementation of the above-mentioned model was supported by a vast training programme attended by more than 3 000 branch employees.
Our actions have been highly appreciated by clients. 92% of our individual clients are satisfied with the services provided by the Bank (50% of them are very satisfied). In their assessment, clients appreciate mostly such components of the Bank’s competitive edge as the high level of customer service (in particular, inbranches), state-of-the-art technological solutions (both in the internet and mobile application), competitive offer and conviction that the Bank fulfils its promises. Our branch employees are perceived by clients as nice, pleasant and oriented on customer needs. Also the quality of our electronic channels have been highly appreciated. Bank’s clients recognise the scope of the functionalities on the offer, easy navigation in the services and security.
High recommendation rate among clients (more than half of the clients recommends the Bank) demonstrates that Bank’s actions correspond to the needs of the clients. In the corporate client group more than 40% of companies recommend Bank Millennium. Over the last years we have been observing a by-far positive up trend in customer satisfaction at the Bank.