Bob Lyddon - Lyddon Consulting Services - Thames Ditton 14 July, 2010, 12:56 0 likes

The subjects of this survey correlate customer satisfaction to some very specific issues, whereas others might choose different yardsticks for measuring satisfaction, like turnaround time on a credit request or responsiveness of telephone support.

Would it not aid transparency if it were stated in the invitation that the scope of the survey relates to very specific offerings that will be showcased at SIBOS?

The question "How long does it take today on average (as an existing client) to resolve an enquiry about a missing payment?" pertains to the Exceptions & Investigations pilot, or "E&I".

The questions to corporates and banks along the lines of "Would you consider switching to a different bank for better customer service around on-boarding, account maintenance and query handling?", and "What are the limitations of your current on boarding and service environment?" pertain to the Electronic Bank Account Management pilot, or "EBAM".

It would further aid transparency if it were revealed what the scope and implementation status of both E&I and EBAM currently are, referencing in particular the recent decision not to proceed with the decommissioning of the MT messages (192,195 etc) for case management.

The EBAM pilot, for example, does not currently test the onboarding of a customer that is completely new to the bank and has to then pass the bank's KYC, KYB and AML tests (and indeed the commercial test of whether the bank wants to accept the customer at all), that is according to EBAM presentations made on the conference circuit.

Transparency would be further fostered by disclosure about how the survey data will be analysed and the headline conclusions drawn, by whom and with what mandate, so that the survey does take the market forward, and is not another strapline of (a) corporates want x (b) they only get y from their banks now (c) E&I and EBAM would deliver x (d) if only the banks did z.

Such surveys risk lacking impact when the results appear to serve a pre-configured agenda of whoever commissioned them (which is who, by the way, in this instance?), in the process raising expectations of imminent new services which are dashed. The blame for failure is then duly laid at the door of the banks for not delivering z.

This pre-clusion seems to be common ground with the Innotribe stream at SIBOS, which has the sub-title "Where are the banks?": i.e. it infers that the banks are in zzzzz mode, rather than working on the z+z+z+z+z deriving from PSD, SEPA, TSU, ISO20022, EBICS.