The evolution of customer service in the digital age

Have you ever slid into the DMs of service provider like MTN, Capitec, Nedbank or DStv, asking for help with a lost bank card, advise on products and services or help with connectivity problems?  

You are not alone. With the demise of the physical yellow pages, and in the age of Google, a significant portion of South African society are resorting to reach out to or contact their service providers via their social media platforms for customer assistance.

Social media transforms relationship between individuals and organisations

The introduction of chatbots who share the likes of Vodacom’s TOBi, Absa’s Abby, Nedbank’s Enbi, and MultiChoice’s T.U.M.I has also seen a massive exodus of customers from the waiting queues on telephonic helplines to online chat platforms that required less wait-time, less airtime and spares one from the dragged-out disclaimers at the beginning of the call (before any options are presented), as well as the annoying, looping adverts and tacky call-waiting music.

But just how helpful are these avenues in terms of customer service and resolving an issue? While brands like Absa and MultiChoice seem to be getting it right, others are receiving a considerable amount of flack for the overly generic and apathetic replies.

Who answers your DMs?

Community managers are the people who respond to your inbox messages on behalf of the organisation you are reaching out to. While most of the time for smaller businesses and brands, they are recruited inhouse and are quite hands-on with operations, a number of bigger brands use agencies to manage the responses on their social media pages.

These community managers are human responders unlike the Chatbots and respond according to the rules laid out for them in the brand’s social media playbook.

More often than not, smaller queries are effectively resolved on the platform, and this has truly saved customers a lot of time and money from having to physically call in or go into the store. One could say, it is community managers themselves who have ushered in this new era of conveniences. As such, the value provided by community management on social media pages cannot be disputed.

Getting through the pile

But sometimes, because of the large volume of enquiries a brand gets online, limited time to respond and pressure to respond to all enquiries on time, responses tend to come off as a bit too generic, and without a physical person in front of the responder, customers of major brands have complained about a sense of apathy, with no accountability and a less personal experienced is received, with many queries going unresolved.  

According to a 2022 Consumer Research report conducted by BPO provider, Merchants, banking clients found automated, often meaningless, responses to be one of their biggest frustrations when it comes to banking. While 93% of respondents highlighted digital channels as their preferred method of banking, when it came to problem solving or customer service, these same people wanted to speak to another person. An actual person with knowledge of the bank’s operations.

ALSO READ: SA bank customers still prefer human interaction for problem solving – study

That response is quite telling of the quality of customer service being received on online platforms. We decided to test these platforms in a digital experiment to see just how well social media channels fair in handling queries in the face of new-age customer care.

The experiment outline

The industry: Banking

The scenario: I would pose as a working-class South African in the average income bracket looking to change banks to get a new personal account. My salary after deductions is around R15 000 per month. I actively use card for their transactions so the account is current and I do not need a savings. What can this bank offer me?

The brands: The big four namley Absa ,FNB, Nedbank and Standard Bank.

The contenders: Social media channel managers

The platforms and method of enquiry: Facebook and Twitter inboxing

Criteria for point system: Response time (Did I wait for more than an hour for a response?), Relevance of response (Did they understand my question?), Usefulness (Can I take back the information given and make a decision based on it?) and the personalised experience (Did I feel of value as a customer to them?). Each point will be rated out of 10 with 10 being excellent service and 1 being unacceptable service.  

NOW READ: SA has taken to social media like never before

The execution and outcome

The messages were all sent out around 12 midday on a Tuesday to both Facebook and Twitter platforms.

The first to reply was Absa, exactly 30 minutes later on their Twitter platform, and 8 minutes after that on their Facebook, keeping it well below an hour and scoring a full 10 out of 10 for its response time.

Relevance of response: The community manager on Twitter asked for a contact number to get a specialist to provide a callback to explain the products on offer a bit more – help offered but not as enthusiastically as I hoped. I would still have to go through the whole phone-call routine.

ALSO READ: Absa expands its digital payments universe with Google Wallet

The Facebook responder also sent a pretty generic, less personalised response, but very aptly provided a direct link to its Gold and Premium Banking option – which shows that they actually used the information I provided with regard to income, spending habits and debit.  That is a good 8 out of 10 for relevance of response.  

In terms of usefulness – on Twitter, they gave us nothing and on Facebook, the premium account type was for earners with an income of around R25 000. But the Gold account suited me well so a 7 out of 10 for that. Was it a great personal experience? While the tone was inviting and friendly on Twitter, my name was spelled wrong. Facebook was just straight out of the playbook, no extra commas or dashes added.  So that is a 5 out of 10 for them. All in all Absa’s online customer services scored a 30 out of 40.

Two hours later and still no response from the other three. So I waited…

Eventually, Standard bank came in, in second place on its Twitter platform around 2 hours and 4 minutes later, scoring itself a 7 out of 10 for response time.

Was it relevant? It was to some degree. The community manager directed me straight to the site where all the bank account options were listed with a link. That a solid 9 out of 10.  

Was it useful? Hardly. A ‘variety of accounts’ is intimidating to digest as one still has to sift through it all by themselves – unlike Absa that suggests its Gold account at the forefront of the conversation. This was far more of a detached, work-it-out-for-yourself response – that’s a 4 out of 10.  

Was it personalised? I liked that they used my name and added the ‘glad to hear you would like to join the family’. The hug emoji was a nice touch too. But were my needs directly addressed on this? No. Information I provided such as my income, spending habits and debit orders were completely ignored. That’s a 3.  

Standard Bank scores a 23 out of 40.

Nedbank finally replied at 17.45pm on Facebook – almost 6 hours later. This was not ideal, but they do acknowledge this and apologise at the outset. And so the bank scored a 4 out of 10 for Response Time.

But boy were they relevant. Nedbank sure did understand the assignment. As a Nedbank client already with an existing chat window, I did not pose the question to them myself but instead asked a fellow journalist to put the same question forward from her Twitter and Facebook profiles (hence the night mode interface).  

The Nedbank community manager knew exactly what we wanted. 10 out of 10 for relevance. In fact, Nedbank provided probably the most useful data from all the brands. They took the information provided and suggested the most suitable account with a clear outline of how it all works, addressing every single one of the requirements put before them. 10 out of 10 for usefulness.

NOW READ: Nedbank offers new opportunity network service – and its free for now

In terms of a personalised experience, I would say it was a fair one, though not the best. While they got my colleague’s name right, and addressed all her individual requirements, there is no follow up to sign her up, or the inviting friendly nature that Standard Bank exhibited. Did we feel valued as a potential customer? Not terribly. Still, Nedbank has done well and scores a 7 out of 10 for its personalised experienced.

Nedbank scores a 31 out of 40.

And then there was FNB…

I last checked both Facebook and Twitter chat windows around 10pm that night. A whole 10 hours after sending through the enquiry there was just no response.

After 20 hours of no response from FNB on their Twitter (@Rb_sa and @FNBSA) and Facebook platforms, with marketing content still being published on their newsfeed as scheduled but no notice or apologies related to technical difficulties being experienced on their wall resulting in backlogs and delays in responses, I reached out to FNB’s media team to try understand the delay.

They assured me they were following up. At 8.17am I received a response on the Facebook platform. Placing myself in the shoes of a customer or potential customer who received a response so late, I know I would be terribly peeved. Who knows if I would have even received a response had I not gone to those in the know as a media personnel. For this reason, I did not even score FNB.

Conclusions from the experiment

Absa really impressed with its response rate on both platforms and its usefulness on the Facebook one. Nedbank’s usefulness was first-class but still needs to work of its response rate. Standard Bank’s personalised experience spoke for itself. FNB needs to do some serious introspection – though I will give the bank credit for its enthusiasm in the personalized experience in its response as well as its usefulness.

Guaranteed though that if a customer walked into one of the branches of these banks with this very same query, they would be ticking all these boxes. The era of convenience has its limits, but it is one we are settling for. Merchant’s research shows that nearly one in three respondents (29%) only walk into their bank only a few times a year. This is usually when they are unable to solve a problem online.

Moneyweb reported that the big four shut down close to 700 branches in the last decade, with more still coming. Let’s hope online customer services continues to become more effective by the time physical bank branches become a thing of the past.