Online banks fall short on service

A study has found that the online customer service provided by many financial institutions in the UK is severely lacking.

A joint survey by Kana Software and IBM found that 53 per cent of banks in the UK that were asked by a 'mystery shopper' to provide the answer to a simple query either got the answer wrong or didn't respond to the request.

One third of the institutions didn't provide an email address on their website for customers to contact and only half offered web forms for surfers to make enquiries.

Marchai Bruchey, chief marketing officer at Kana, said: "We were surprised at the poor level of customer service revealed by the study, especially with UK banks and building societies being so reliant on a superior customer experience to differentiate their brands.

"With internet access in nearly 16 million UK households, there is growing consumer demand for a quality online experience, and more consistency between web and branch. Any business that ignores online communication channels does so at their peril – in the competitive world of retail banking, this is especially true," Bruchey continued.

And even more worryingly, the survey found that only a third of banks offered their customers secure communication channels, with two-thirds not encrypting the data sent between the bank and the customer.

Read Web User's assessment of the online banking industry in the UK.

www.kana.com
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