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One such innovation was the introduction of full self-service banking in HSBC branches. This was introduced to reduce counter queues and speed up transactional processing, while feeing up branch staff to spend more time engaging with customers and meeting their financial needs. Implementing
this change involved reversing how space was used in branches so that at least 80% of the space is now dedicated to customers. To ensure the ‘human touch’ was maintained with customers, branch sales floor management was introduced with all staff spending time with customers in the banking halls. As a core part of these changes the bank heavily invests in retraining and team building to prepare staff for the physical and cultural changes introduced with their new branch environment.
HSBC finds that human factors are one of the biggest challenges to address when trying to introduce such fundamental changes as these. HSBC said that it looks at customers’ motivational drivers and builds these into the design of new propositions. As an example, HSBC wanted to introduce a self-service deposit system for cheques. However, customers indicated they would only use the machines for small deposits as they wanted certainty and affirmation that their deposits would get accepted and processed. The result is a cheque scanner in each machine that prints a picture of every cheque deposited on the customer receipt – thus helping to build customer confidence and trust.
In developing new propositions HSBC starts with customer and market insight. This insight is applied throughout the implementation stages of design, communication and delivery. The company also supports these insights through mining its extensive customer database to really ‘get under the skin’ in understanding what makes customers ‘tick’.
Both personal and commercial customers have very different financial needs depending on their stage in life/ business maturity, aspirations, individual financial circumstance – HSBC focuses on delivering relevant banking to meet customers’ needs. ‘One size fits all’ is no longer an option in the highly competitive banking sector.
For example, HSBC built a proposition based on insights into the lives of international travellers who live and work in different countries and need borderless banking facilities. To address their needs, HSBC developed its ‘International Premier’ product. This enables the customer to see all of their accounts wherever they are in the world and manage their money at the touch of a button. Behind the scenes this involved investment in product and legal infrastructure but the service offering to customers makes it all look effortless. While brand, trust and reputation are clearly at the core of HSBC’s business, investment in new technology also plays a major part in underpinning innovation.
For its self-service banking, HSBC collaborated with a number of technology companies to develop and install customer friendly machines. The companies involved benefited in their own innovation work by having HSBC as a lead customer. Recently the company has worked with Apple to deliver banking on the i-phone to customers of First Direct. It is now just started a pilot scheme in some small branches where high-resolution videoconferencing technology has been introduced. This allows staff to get easy access to HSBC specialists, which not only makes them more effective and efficient, but also cuts down considerably on travel.
HSBC encourages mobile and digital working wherever possible. HSBC has recently introduced green (paperless) banking and believes this is an area the government could play a greater role in recognising and encouraging through legal changes enabling wider acceptance of electronic signatures, and placing the choice with consumers on how they want to receive statements, notices and Terms & Conditions. HSBC now offers its customers two green choices: they can choose a ‘light green’ option, where they receive no paper statements, but do have cheque books or a ‘dark green’ option, which is entirely paperless. One of the main barriers to more customers taking the dark green option appears to be schools as they are the main recipients of cheques!
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