A campaign that uncovered poor online customer service and support during Covid. At a time when digital access to banking services was critical, Olive revealed widespread frustration among UK banking customers. With Cheltenham based PR company, HeadOn PR, bringing the research to national and industry attention, the need for banks to bolster their online customer service provision was clearly highlighted.
Our Client
Olive Communications is one of the UK’s fastest-growing and most progressive Managed Cloud Communications Providers, delivering business-critical solutions for transformational growth. Aiming to bridge cloud, data and mobility services seamlessly, it focuses on supporting businesses in providing exceptional customer experience with ease.
At a time when the technology landscape is changing rapidly, Olive partners with market-leading brands, including Vodafone, Mitel, Google Cloud and Microsoft, implementing its solutions to drive profitability and operational efficiency.
Reinforcing Olive’s leadership position
Collaborating with Olive to raise its brand awareness, the HeadOn PR team were challenged with reaching Olive’s key industry sectors of finance, technology and customer service provision. It was also essential to gain national-level attention to generate awareness from their sector-diverse target market.
An innovator in their sector, Olive was keen to reinforce its brand position as industry experts on the cutting-edge of market requirements, with forward-thinking solutions that help banks to overcome the challenges identified by the research.
The Study Findings
In the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, as everyone across the UK was asked to remain at home, allowing customers to have efficient online access to core services became critical. Banking was one of those services. However, widespread reports revealed banks were struggling and leaving customers unable to log onto vital services.
In May 2020, we commissioned an independent study on behalf of Olive on 2,000 UK bank customers from 18+ years, and 500 UK Heads of Call Centres, Heads of Customer Service and Customer Service Directors at UK banks. The study, entitled ‘The Future of Online Banking’, was designed to get an insight into customer satisfaction with their banking services, and to identify where the challenges lay.
During a time of immense and rapid change, when technology is equally advancing to keep up with demand, a quick turnaround to appeal to the target market’s need was needed. Therefore, in just over a month, the analysis of the research was complete, and our PR was ready to release.
Already aware of the dissatisfaction, the results still surprised, with over half of UK customers complaining of poor online banking services and support since the Covid-19 lockdown.
58% of banking customers were unable to access the help or online banking facilities they needed from home at a time they needed them the most. Customers’ frustrations with their bank’s digital services were heightened further by fragmented online banking services and support channels, and a quarter complained of customer service channels not being joined up.
We also carried out polls both before and during the pandemic, discovering that 60% of banks admitted their online customer service was not up to scratch with plans to make improvements. Despite one in three investing between £500,000 and £2 million on their digital and online customer services, our customer research revealed that not much progress was made.
In our PR coverage, Martin Flick, CEO at Olive, highlighted what a missed opportunity this was for banks. “Lockdown has been a real opportunity for banks to aid and support their customers through testing times, by providing the best in collaborative, online customer service; enabling customers to stay safe and observe social distancing rules by being able to bank online, whenever and however.”
And how they had not been able to deliver, “Despite banks investing significant sums in enhancing their digital banking systems since Covid-19, our report shows that consumers are still feeling immensely frustrated by the lack of choice, accessibility and at times, quality of online services.”
