Standard Chartered's inside-out customer service revolution

At the heart of the financial crisis over two years back, Standard Chartered Bank took the initiative to launch its global customer charter, a bank-wide transformation programme to make its consumer bank even more competitive and to enable it to grow more rapidly when the crisis subsided.

This transformation involved re-engineering the business to ensure it was even more customer focused – in over 20 markets and this impacted 30,000 of their customers worldwide.  The Group Head of Personal Banking and Chief Marketing Officer James Galloway, who has a wealth of experience in various industries, engineered the charter. Speaking to the Daily FT when on a visit to Sri Lanka, he explained how the charter, which outlines the different measures taken to improve customer experience, was adopted in various markets and the overall impact it has had on the bank.

Following are excerpts from the interview:

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

Q: What made SCB adopt the global customer charter and when was this implemented?

A: The strategy for the company was to change the bank from a product-centric to a customer-centric bank and we are now into our third year since implementing this shift. The overall objective of the charter is to try and broach to over 20 markets and 30,000 customers that we cater to, the common understanding of what it means to be customer focused. It’s not as simple as it sounds when we have to get it across to various jurisdictions and languages and divisions so we have spent the past several months on articulation on what it is to be customer focused.

Q: What exactly does the charter consist of?

A: The charter has three promises in it – to provide fast friendly accurate service, solutions to their financial needs and to recognise our customers’ overall banking relationship solutions to financial needs. That way it’s not just about services, it’s actually about giving the right type of business through the right service relationship at the right time.

The bank has globally taken a call that improved customer experience is the key driver for 2011 and the charter spells out different measures taken to achieve it. This strategy is essentially for retail products in consumer banking – like credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, priority banking and so on.

The second thing we have in mind, not just as a strategy for the bank, is that the whole world has changed following the financial crisis – it has led to a change in regulations and the regulators are now demanding that banks conduct themselves in entirely different ways.

A number of regulators are also coming up with versions of what is very similar to the charter of our bank. The Financial Services Authority in the UK, our main regulator has come up with six principles which largely end up being similar to our three goals in the charter so we are quite aligned in that way.

Q: How has the charter been implemented in Sri Lanka so far?

A: The steps taken here in Sri Lanka were also similar as the charter was rolled out for the entire group.  We had a session for about 100 of our top managers here, really going through the top examples of what our customers need which included real life examples and it proved to be a very powerful session.

We then had workshops for several areas encompassed within the bank. After all that what we had a pooling of ideas because wherever we have service points, we get a lot of feedback from our customers on how we can do better and we encourage people to give in as many ideas as possible on how we could make a difference by implementing the principles of the charter.

We came up with almost 115 ideas that were acknowledged by us.  Each of those were broken down into the various areas they fall into – process, product, innovation, technology, marketing and so on and then specific team members worked on them. We have implemented about 50 of the priority ideas so far and we have really made a difference in that sense.

Then in addition to that, we analyse the complaints that we receive in detail, you know really mapping it down to the grass root levels and then make necessary changes to correct them. Another good thing that we implemented through the charter was the feedback from customers where we ask them about the issues they have and then see what we can do about it so it really is a constant process.

Then with the main processes of the bank, we mapped out the major processes and looked at how we could reengineer each and every one to make it much faster and fine-tuned it – again it’s all about continuous improvement. We are now proud to say that a customer can walk into any branch in Sri Lanka and walk out with a debit card and cheque book in just 15 minutes.

Q: Are there any particular customer areas that SCB concentrates on here in Sri Lanka?

A: Well, one of our main area of focus here has been Priority Banking which we re-launched last August where we looked at the total offering we can give to a customer. SCB has a very experienced team here in Sri Lanka and what we try to concentrate on now is to see things from the customer’s point of view.

Our main market of course is our premier banking customers although we are now also gradually moving onto the middle-class market. Through Priority Banking, we strive to provide our customers with a better overall experience by providing them with relationship managers who see to their every need, by waiving several fees on all services, our 360 rewards system and by ensuring that they receive unparalleled service at all our branches globally.

The introduction of the charter has brought about an exciting and better way to run a business and has been a revelation from a customer’s point of view.

Q: What sort of impact has the charter had on your global operations?

A: Standard Chartered is now the best international bank in 12 of its markets and the best bank overall in eight markets. We have calculated a 30-50% reduction in cycle time when handling problem resolution globally.

Our ‘netpromoter’ score, which is a measure used by banks, hotels and other service product companies, has increased and continues to go up, so have our scores with the engagement of staff and our product per customer compound rates are world class.

The bank has even changed its brand to ‘Here for Good,’ as we have been operating in Sri Lanka for a very long time now, to prove to our customers that we strive to conduct our services in a good way and that they will receive nothing but the best services from SCB.