HSBC is quietly revolutionising its retail banking operations. What started out as a training programme in its Direct Mortgage team at the start of 2023 has evolved into a global initiative designed to embed empathy and improve customer experience into its retail banking.
The Customer Connections programme, which was rolled out across 700 members of staff in the bank’s Direct Mortgage team, picked up three gold medals at the UK Customer Experience Awards in October last year.
The training scheme designed by the Foundation, aimed to embed systemic change within the organisation by making staff ‘self aware’ of the impact of their communication with customers.
“One of the biggest things we needed to get that culture shift was to immerse people in what really mattered to their customers. That meant making sure they had a real awareness of how they sounded on the phone to their customers,” explained John Sills, managing partner at The Foundation Growth Consultancy.
The programme produced a near-instantaneous 10 point bump in the Direct Mortgage team’s net promoter score (NPS), while both mortgage associates and advisors reported enjoying their customer conversations more.
After a full 12 months, the NPS figures for the UK Direct Mortgage team showed a 15 point increase.
Customer Connections also produced an improvement in call efficiency with the Direct Mortgage team registering lower call waiting times and lower average call handling times.
“The perception is if you let people have better conversations, calls will get longer, but it’s not the case because people are listening properly… By encouraging people to have better conversations, calls got shorter,” explained Sills.
Better customer conversations and more efficient call handling also impacted on employee experience. “People felt less restricted — they felt like they’re able to have a human conversation with a real person. The efficiency of the calls really made a difference in terms of how they were feeling. Happier colleagues equals happier customers,” he added.
According to Sills, the initial success of Customer Connections is attributable to the ‘human experience’ aspect of the training. The training programme forgoes theory and instead focuses on “real customers and real experiences”.
“We’re not trying to get people to do theory, or learn a customer experience framework. What really matters is that people are aware of how they sound, and aware of what good looks like through those calls,” explained Sills.
To embed systemic change into HSBC’s DNA, aspects of Customer Connections have been integrated into the onboarding process for new hires at the bank.
There has also been a concerted effort to enshrine self awareness with the team leaders throughout the bank, particularly those working in the customer contact centres. “You coach the team leaders… [they are] much more stable,” said Sills.
“If you don’t embed it in onboarding, then within a year your training might as well never have happened because everyone that’s been on it has gone to work elsewhere,” he added.