UAE banks need to focus more on customer complaints as more services get digitalised
UAE banks fail to respond to over a third of priority conversations on social media: KPMG
Dubai: UAE’s banking sector needs to pay more attention to customer service as they are going through rapid digital transformation, according to KPMG.
While digitalization of banking and financial services has progressed rapidly during the pandemic, service complaints account for half of the industry conversation on social media platforms, – KPMG said in its latest UAE Banking Sentiment Index, in partnership with BrandsEye.
The index is based on an analysis of 41,430 public tweets about major UAE banks over three months. Each post received a sentiment rating — positive, neutral, or negative. These scores were then used to calculate a Net Sentiment ranking for each bank.
“The boundaries between front and back offices are blurring and banks are becoming closer to their customers, driven to innovate by the insights they gain. Customer-centric banks today are structuring their operations in new and exciting ways,” said Goncalo Traquina, Partner, KPMG Lower Gulf.
“The UAE Banking Sentiment Index highlights how customer service responsiveness can be a competitive differentiator, translating into greater profitability. It is, therefore, crucial to build trust and sustain value through all customer experiences and interactions.”
Focus on consumer
In the past year, the UAE’s Central Bank has taken action to strengthen consumer protection in the financial services sector. Additionally, organizations are operating in an increasingly competitive business landscape and the entry of new, digital-only players has highlighted the need for banks to make digital service a foundational enabler of their operating models and supply chain.
The UAE Banking Sentiment Index highlights how customer service responsiveness can be a competitive differentiator, translating into greater profitability. It is, therefore, crucial to build trust and sustain value through all customer experiences and interactions.
In terms of channels of communication, call centres were mentioned most frequently (51.8%) and also had the highest levels of negative sentiment (-84.8%) on social media. Interestingly, while mobile apps ranked fourth in terms of frequency of mentions, they had the least negative sentiment, with many banking customers complimenting the user-friendliness of this channel.
Long wait times
Turnaround (wait) time was the largest pain point for customers. Nearly half (44%) of customer service complaints received had long wait times at their core. This was followed by reports of no response being received (22.4%) and the issue of dealing with multiple customer service agents (9.5%) to get assistance. The report also found that banks do not respond to over a third of priority conversations and take an average of 13 hours to respond to direct conversations.