HSBC has an internal team responsible for customer experience around the world.  50 people have to change the way 330,000 people work, improving things for more than 100 million customers.  A first priority in 2009 was to look innovatively at how complaints are handled, working with The Foundation.

The initial big step has been cultural – seeing complaints as an opportunity to improve business insight and customer experience, rather than something to be minimised.  This was turned into a plan for each HSBC country in three stages:

1. Make sure each customer making a complaint is happy by the end of the process – an outcome as much about empathy as resolving the issue.  This is more important than closing the complaint quickly, something regulators measure that can be counter-productive.  Some banks, focusing more on regulation than customer outcomes, resolve complaints without ever telling the customer and leave them feeling unsure.  In Canada, HSBC has a “Recovery with Flair” scheme, where central complaints staff can solve the problem themselves and then send an apology (e.g. flowers) to customers.

2. Make it easier to complain.  This seems strange – it increases the number of complaints.  But if most customers are happy with the process, then more complaints mean HSBC hears about more issues and gets a clearer picture of what needs fixing.  Often banks make you write to your branch manager to make a complaint.  HSBC India has a “grievance redressal” button on every page of their website, to make complaining quick and easy. 

3. Remove the root causes of complaints.  This reduces the number of problems out there, not just the number of complaints (total number of complaints is often measured by regulators, but this can discourage banks from listening to their customers).  Where shallow analysis might define “fees” as the root cause of a complaint, it is often about the way that fees are communicated.  HSBC Malaysia found that a charge for SMS updates was an unwelcome surprise for customers.  They now refund the fee the first time and clearly explain the charge to customers, removing the surprise and the feeling of unfairness.

Commenting on progress, Alex Matthews, Head of Service Quality, said ‘Although it seems counterintuitive that an increase in complaints can lead to improvements in customer experience, we have had support from across the world for this direction and it is now being implemented in countries as diverse as China, Canada, France, the UAE and the UK.’