HSBC has spent the last two years getting closer to its customers. Starting in January 2023, the global bank embarked on a massive culture change programme called CARE. The scheme sought to instil customer-centric behaviour in its 45,000 employees, across the 17 countries where HSBC has retail businesses.
CARE strove to enshrine core operating principles — connected, accountable, responsive and empathetic — into all banking staff. But it is just the starting point of the bank’s CX journey. It’s up to individual country teams to take global guidelines, adjust them where necessary, and apply them to the local market.
Seeing the Results of CARE
HSBC in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) rolled out CARE last year and is already seeing positive results.
CARE has “been really well received, not only by the team, but by our customers”, Per Forsman, head of customer, international and marketing, HSBC UAE, told Customer Experience Magazine.
“The culture shift around ‘customer first’ is translating into an improved customer experience across a number of customer touchpoints,” he added.
Running Labs to Troubleshoot Pain Points
Alongside CARE training, HSBC UAE identified key service moments and is ensuring that customer facing teams know the most effective way to deliver them to clients.
The bank has also been running a series of Live Labs to examine customer pain points. The labs bring together key stakeholders from across the business to ‘workshop’ CX issues and examine how it can “reinvent the process and develop better solutions”, said Forsman.
“It’s a joint effort between the customer experience team, the process owners, and the frontline staff that shape the experience,” he added.
Closing the Gap Between HSBC and Its Customers
Senior executives are visiting branches to work alongside frontline staff and meet customers face-to-face. This improves the management’s understanding about “what is getting in the way of delivering a great customer experience”, said Forsman.
The leadership team now has “firsthand knowledge to make better decisions, [and] design products and journeys in a better way”, he added.
Being closer to customers, helps HSBC identify and prioritise investment decisions. “Many investments have been driven by being closer to customers [and] our team members through these programmes,” explained Forsman.
Leveraging the HSBC Online Community
Perhaps the best example of getting closer to customers is the HSBC Online Community. Launched midway through 2024, around 1,500 customers provide direct feedback through surveys, spot polls, discussion forums, focus groups and direct interviews.
“It serves as an integral part of how we develop products and services. It helps make sure we are on the right track,” said Forsman.
The community provides “quick responses to any kind of development process, whether it is with products, propositions or journeys”, he added.
The creation of the online community has reduced reliance on third-party research firms. Previously, market reports were expensive and had taken a minimum of two-to-four months to complete. Now research is finished in a matter of days enabling HSBC to be far more agile in its customer response.
The community also creates brand advocates that positively impact NPS and organically promote products and services beyond the community.
Winning Awards and Improving Local Benchmarking Scores
The combined CX initiatives within HSBC UAE has lifted the bank into 1st place for strategic NPS among local banks.
In the last year, the bank also broke the top ten of KPMG’s customer excellence rankings for the first time.
HSBC UAE was also named the Overall Winner at the Gulf Customer Experience Awards in April.
At the same event, it also claimed golds for the Best Customer Centric Culture, Best Complaint Handling and Best Use of Customer Insight and Feedback.
In addition, it picked up a silver award for the CX Team of the Year.
Arguably more important than the awards and improvements in local benchmarking surveys, has been the overall reduction in customer complaints. “We’ve decreased customer complaints by 50% and seen an increase in overall employee satisfaction,” added Forsman.