Case studies

Helping a global bank increase competitive advantage

Improved customer service

A global bank needed to improve the customer experience of clients in its highly profitable “transaction services” business. As the business evolved and clients expanded their global footprint, the bank’s traditional country-specific approach to service needed to evolve. Although local business practices remained important, clients were increasingly demanding more consistent processes and service, and a global view of their transactions.

The challenge

In recent years, this bank’s transaction services operations had grown significantly while achieving record profits. However, a client survey showed that customer satisfaction had fallen behind the competition in some areas. In particular, the survey revealed that the bank was hard to do business with, and that customer service representatives were taking too long to address issues.

The fundamental problem was that the business had outgrown its customer service model and information systems. The bank has a significant global presence. It had thrived by allowing its local transaction services operations to function independently and tailor their services to local needs. But as the business became more global, these country-specific silos led to inefficiencies and delays, especially when providing clients with a global view of their operations. For example, it could take weeks of effort just to compile a client’s scorecard across different regions.

The bank’s first attempt to solve the problem actually made things worse. A newly deployed global system for tracking customer issues was harder to use than the systems it replaced and did not reflect the realities of local markets. This forced many customer service representatives to resort to paper-based processes, which took up to six times longer and deprived the bank of crucial visibility into ongoing work.  

How we helped

Deloitte helped the bank conduct a global assessment of its existing customer service operations. Then we made detailed recommendations on ways to improve. After an in-depth analysis of business needs and regional variations in systems and processes, our team helped the bank develop a vision for the future and provided specific recommendations on ways to:

  • Reduce complexity through simplified service processes that are standardized across geographies and aligned with strategic customer segments.
  • Improve response times through system and process improvements that enable faster analysis, status tracking, and problem resolution for service requests.
  • Reduce manual processing through automation of critical tasks.

The recommendations were supported by a prioritized roadmap of strategic changes that would help achieve global standardization, as well as a business case that showed the required investments and expected benefits.​

Service Operations

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Solution

The resulting analysis gave the bank a detailed look at its customer service hubs and global operations. It showed just how different the customer service practices in each region really were.

Against this backdrop, a number of recommended improvements have been implemented, which have reduced response time by up to 30 percent and increased productivity by more than 20 percent. The organization is now able to resolve customer issues much more quickly. It can manage the workload with fewer customer service staff. Also, 30 full-time employees that were previously dedicated to producing reports have been redeployed to higher value service tasks. These improvements have enabled the bank to boost customer satisfaction and retention, while at the same time reducing annual operating costs by $15 million. 

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