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Banking and Cards Research

Digging into the Customer Experience: Banking and Credit Cards

Corporate Insight’s Bank Monitor, Credit Card Monitor and Small Business Card Monitor provide ongoing coverage of the products, websites and overall customer experience offered by the nation’s leading banks and card issuers. Our value-added banking and credit card research digs deeply to evaluate the retail and small business customer experience.

Message Centers and Live Chat Tools PDF Print E-mail
The August 2012 SBCM Featured Topic focused on two online communication services – message centers and live chat tools. Except for one, every SBCM firm offers a private site message center that allows customers to send and receive messages from the card issuers. The exception firm does allow customers to send an inquiry on the private site, though the firm’s response is sent to the customer's personal email account. As for live chat tools, three SBCM firms offer it on the private site, with only one of three SBCM firms offering to help with business card account inquiries.

When analyzing message centers, we focused on:
  • Accessibility
  • Layout of Message Centers & Response Messages
  • Message Form Topic & Sub-topic Options
  • Message Response Time
  • Email Notifications
With regards to a message center’s accessibility, we found 63% of SBCM firms place an easy-to-find link to their message center on the private site header or navigational menu. The best message centers are ones that are not only easy to find, but that also allow clients to view messages and compose a message all within the same center. Five SBCM firms offer a unified message center, some of which utilized tabs to separate new messages, sent messages and where clients can compose a message. The presentation of the message forms were also examined, checking to see which firms provide a list of topics or sub-topics that help categorize the customer’s inquiry. We also found two SBCM firms that attempt to answer a customer’s inquiry before they compose the message by generating FAQs and offering a search tool, respectively.

Lastly for message centers, we looked at the response time and availability of email notifications. Two SBCM firms offered the fastest response time of four hours, while the other firms’ response time varied from 10 hours to two business days. In regards to email notifications, five SBCM firms sent customers a confirmation notification that a message was sent to customer service, while seven SBCM firms sent an email notification that a response was available on the private site.

As for chat live tools, we mostly focused on where they are located and whether they specifically assist business card holders. While three SBCM firms offer a chat tool on the private site, only one can help customers with business account questions. Another firm can assist customers with specific section questions, like transaction disputes, and general business questions.
 
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