HONG KONG, 20 JANUARY 2009 – Banking professionals in Singapore and Hong Kong are expected to act on restoring customer’s trust, according to the latest Asian Banker Research survey.
The survey was conducted in late 2008, and was commissioned by Avaya, a US-based enterprise communications systems provider.
Urgent action
Results indicated that 65 per cent of surveyed banking professionals in Hong Kong and Singapore recognised the need for increasing the level of communication.
Forty-three per cent of the respondents admitted the current inadequacy of customer communication in their banks, of which about two-thirds anticipated urgent action for improvement.
In the light of current events and possible regulatory and supervisory changes, customer communication has become indispensable to forge mutually rewarding relationships between banks and customers.
E-mail most common
Banks are reaching out to customers across multiple channels but mostly through impersonal ways, as indicated by the survey results.
E-mail remains the most frequent method, with 69 per cent of communication done via e-mail at least or more than once per month, 38 per cent via mail or fax, 36 per cent via telephone and 26 per cent via face-to-face interaction. This suggests a need for increasing customer communications through more direct channels.
Forty per cent of respondents strongly indicated that administrative hassles are the barriers to improving customer communication, followed by performance target (38 per cent) and service fulfilment (35 per cent).
Better risk profiling
Risk profiling (33 per cent), information disclosure (30 per cent) and analysis review (28 per cent) are the three most important areas for banks to improve quality and documentation of customer communication.
The findings signify the growing need for banks to optimise communication strategy and technology to deliver personalised customer service, improve workforce performance and meet regulatory compliance.
Centralised storage and monitoring of customer communication and better assessment of the customer’s risk profile will become very important amid the current market instability.
The survey polled the opinions of 40 key industry executives and professionals in Hong Kong and Singapore including bank chief operating officers, heads of retail and wealth management, senior product managers and relationship managers.
