What they wanted:

HBOS wanted to further enhance customer service in order to optimise account activity and revenue.  In order to start their programme they needed an objective benchmark of the degree to which service met their aspiration of ‘Treating Customers like People'.  Any measure needed to be consistent in order to:

• Cover the retail and telephony sites and track performance over time
• Objectively measure behaviours and attitudes.

In addition HBOS recognised that any audit of this type needed to be motivational for staff and act as a development tool to catalyse positive change.

What we did:

HBOS provided recorded calls from each of their centres.  These calls were filtered by Harding & Yorke to ensure consistency and fairness.  The final calls were distributed to our researchers for analysis against 230 pre-determined points.  The final output included an assessment of complaint, sales calls and service calls.  These were further split between banking and savings. 

On the retail side, Harding &Yorke researchers opened accounts with HBOS in order to conduct transactions in 100 branches across the country. 

Through the analysis Harding &Yorke were able to determine what it felt like to be an existing or new customer of HBOS.  More importantly HBOS were provided with practical best practice sound examples of employees who were achieving the company's aspirations of ‘Great Service'.  This allowed HBOS to set a benchmark for excellence as well as enabling a clear action plan for short and longer term interventions.

The Outcome:

The detailed trend analysis and cascadable multimedia presentation enabled HBOS to engage staff in a motivational way.  In particular it helped HBOS to communicate the service vision in a practical way.

Quote:  "Harding & Yorke provided us with a detailed and practical insight about ‘where we were' compared with ‘where we wanted be'.  It enabled us to focus our efforts on the quick wins and scope our longer term strategy.  Looking forward: we have a robust benchmark against which to track progress."

Nick Read - Head of Service Leadership