We began the Process Excellence track with a presentation from HSBC's Nadya Hijazi.
A Little Context
Because HSBC is such a large, global company it's difficult to present themselves cohesively to their customers. Perceptions of their customers differ widely based on where they are located and which part of HSBC they work with.
And, HSBC have a very competitive environment in which they must make a multi-million dollar investment in HSBCnet, introducing new functionality, and supporting geographic expansion.
What They Did
HSBC needed a compelling metric at high level that would provide actionable data - one question and diagnostics was used to hit the ground running. A key point was that Nadya worked with the business teams to define the diagnostic questions - but she would only allow their questions to be included if they were ready to action the answer. That's a great way to ensure action takes place!
HSBC surveyed 27,000 customers across 24 countries with a complete survey of the end-to-end customer experience. The last two questions were NPS and why? HSBC also made sure that they included the end users in the survey, not just the decision makers.
Nadya presented three findings around detractors:
- 14% of end users who were detractors made 6 or more calls into call center vs. 7% of promoters. That adds up to serious costs. This higher cost-to-serve goes across all aspects of HSBC brand - whether experience is personal or professional.
- Quality was critical for the customer, and a major factor for customer dormancy and attrition.
- Satisfaction survey - good measure, but NPS more powerful. Only "delighted" were likely to be promoters. "Satisfied" were more likely to be detractors. This surprising finding upset some people who thought they were doing a good job with a 70% satisfaction rating, but their NPS didn't tie up.
She concludes NPS is a measurement of the quality of the relationship versus satisfaction with specific event.
Put It in Context
Nadya related two key things to understand to correctly put your Net Promoter score in context: cultural differences and competition. HSBC found that their top scoring countries were the same as in the Satmetrix white paper. Furthermore, 75% of HSBC customers are multi-banked. They asked their customers to rate and rank their competitors in country which gave evidence of their relative position in market segment in that country. Key learning: do not compare country to country without knowing the cultural bias and competitive climate. It is more important to benchmark in country, and incentivize on local transactional NPS.
How to Move That Score? Innovate by Involving Your Customers!
Nadya implemented a technique called "tryvertising" - beta test online changes on their internet banking platform. They identified main issues, and asked users to road test and give feedback. It was quite revolutionary, as they used detractors and passives as the focus group for the issue. They were able to increase NPS 20%.
Second, involve lots of customers. Don't just use 5-10 people in focus group, involve everyone - she ran webinars with her channel across 3 regions. HSBC got excellent feedback, and had a big impact on their customers' perception of them, which proved to be good for morale for product team and customer! And it cuts out a lot of discussion about what to do, as the improvement design comes straight from customer's mouth.
How Do You Improve the Impact of the Multi-Million Dollar Investment?
NPS alone is not the remedy to everything. Understand how to make changes that strike a balance. Prioritize your customer issues and invest in what cuts across many of your customers, or what costs you your most valuable customers. But, remember, much of what you do is baseline or expected - it will minimize detractors, but will not create promoters.
An interesting technique on increasing response rates is to phrase questions around how the customer expresses something directly - this struck a chord for HSBC customers and doubled their response rates.
Nadya gave us lots to think about.
