How to Improve Efficiency of Retail Branches

Our client, on whom this case study is based is one of the leading banks in India. They wanted us to optimise their Customer Experience System. Their retail branches/centres and frontline employees were not functioning efficiently. Mainly, our client wanted to upgrade their CX initiative so as to derive actionable insights and improve their relationship with the customers.

Point to be noted, the problems that our client was encountering are also faced by numerous points of service centres/retail branches.

Challenges

Numr Research largely faced three challenges.

Our client was already conducting Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys in its retail branches. However, the way they were being conducted was far from efficient. Their NPS program was not delivering the results it should have been delivering. Because there was a Reward or Punishment initiative attached to the program, debunking the data became the central focus of the staff to escape penalisation, instead of understand or utilising it.

Moreover, the bank’s retail branches were conducting NPS surveys on only a subset of its customer base. This often took place through phone calls. Often, by the time the responses were recorded and analysed, 30 to 45 days would pass. Therefore, the report received was old, stale and not actionable.

Lastly, their reward and punishment system led to the employees proactively calling up customers beforehand and requesting a good rating. Some employees even started calling customers demanding explanations for the rating they had given. This led to a steady decline in the response rate.

Fundamentally, our client wanted to ensure that the frontline employees were being managed efficiently and that they were close looping correctly, to provide the best Customer Experience.

Solution

Numr Research devised a two pronged strategy to improve the client’s last mile of service-

1. Most importantly, Numr Research encouraged the client to stop rewarding its retail branches on the basis of the NPS score. The score, on its own is of little importance. What matters instead is what it’s symptomatic of. Moreover, rewarding employees based on the score eradicates the focus from Customer Experience. Instead of the score itself, Numr turned the focus to Responses Rate and Closure of Hot Alerts.
   
   
2. Using its dynamic, unified platform, Numr Research made feedback instantaneous. Meaning, we sent out NPS surveys immediately after the transaction and promptly obtained feedback. This empowered the retail branch managers to instantly understand the problems that were occurring, at their level.

Response Rate is an extremely accurate indicator of the customer’s relationship with a company. Numr Research helped the client increase its response rate by asking the customers for a feedback instead of a good rating. Not only did this promote truthful behaviour, it also led to a stronger relationship between the customers and the bank. Furthermore, using its platform, Numr Research put utmost emphasis on Closure of Hot Tickets. For instance, whenever a survey came back negative, Numr swiftly generated an alarm which enabled managers to mobilise the entire work force at ground level and leverage employees’ strengths to quickly solve customers’ problem. Therefore, using the above methods, Numr made Customer Experience the focal point of the NPS program, as it should always be.

Result

With the help of Numr Research’s CX initiative, our client was able to increase its survey response rate from 8%-9% to 20-25%.

Also, the complaint close looping time decreased to less than 24 hours which fostered an environment of trust between our client and their customers.

Additionally, the percentage of closed tickets increased to 25%-30%. Furthermore, because the front line employees were doing the close looping instead of a call centre, it turned out to be far more effective.

In a nutshell, with Numr Research’s help, our client was successfully able to transform the front line employees into efficient problem solvers. Which, in turn ameliorated their relationship with their customers.