First Direct Phone Service

pbd79

Got this email from first direct CEO today. I haven’t had to call them much in the last year but I can imagine it must be very frustrating especially if you have something urgent to discuss. I have used in the in app chat and got a response within 10-15 minutes which I was happy with considering it was during the day. Hopefully they will get more staff and their telephone customer service levels will return to normal. Only time will tell…..

“I’m getting in touch today to let you know what’s been happening at first direct.  If you’ve tried to call us recently, you may have noticed our call wait times have been longer than what you’d usually expect. I’d like to offer my sincere apologies if you’ve not received the level of service you would normally expect from first direct. I know how frustrating it is when you need to speak to us and can’t get through straight away, and I really appreciate how understanding you have been once you do get to speak to us. What’s happened at first direct? Over the course of last year, we saw a change in customer behaviour, with more people using our digital services and the volume of calls coming into first directfalling. In fact, over half of our customers didn’t call us at all in the second half of the year. But more recently we’ve seen the number of calls steadily increasing. This has created additional pressure on our team and we’ve seen call wait times start to increase. What we’re doing to put it right first direct has offered customers human to human telephone customer service since 1989. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In the last 12 months, we’ve not reduced the number of people in our call centres. In fact, this year we’ve been hiring and training more people to meet demand as fast as we can, but as I’m sure you can appreciate this isn’t a quick fix to the current call wait times. However, right now we’re getting as many people as we can to focus on answering your calls. This is my number one priority. What you can do to help If you are able to use first direct’s digital services, it would help us to focus on our most vulnerable customers who rely solely on the telephone to do their banking with us. In the last few years, we’ve been rapidly introducing new features into our Mobile App and Online Banking, with lots of your everyday banking needs now able to be done quickly and securely online or using the app. It’s easy to check your transactions, make payments, move money, change your address, or even freeze or unfreeze your card online. If you would like to know more about these features and how to use them, we have some helpful articles and video guides that may be able to help. Thank you Finally, I’d like to say thank you for being a first direct customer, and for your continued support and patience while we work to bring you the best service we can. Yours sincerely, Chris Pitt CEO first direct”

sheramber

It must be the 'in thing'.

I received an email from the CEO of RBS saying " I want to personally thank you for your continued support throughout these challenging times." 

born_again

I got it as well.

You may notice now that you no longer get hassled about using digital channels when you call in.

End of the day digital is cheap. Bums on seats cost money.
1 person can only answer one call at a time. But 1 person can handle upto 10 digital conversations at a time. Which is why they take so long to reply

FD need to remember where their roots were nurtured from.

Fingerbobs

born_again said:

I got it as well.

You may notice now that you no longer get hassled about using digital channels when you call in.

End of the day digital is cheap. Bums on seats cost money.
1 person can only answer one call at a time. But 1 person can handle upto 10 digital conversations at a time. Which is why they take so long to reply

FD need to remember where their roots were nurtured from.

But surely that person will take 10 times as long to answer each person's query via the digital channel, so the person-hour rate remains the same? I suppose the advantage is that the customer doesn't notice that their wait time is being spread out between text responses, rather than all happening before they get to ask their initial query.

I guess it's all about "time to initial response" rather than "time to complete interaction"

born_again

Fingerbobs said:

born_again said:

I got it as well.

You may notice now that you no longer get hassled about using digital channels when you call in.

End of the day digital is cheap. Bums on seats cost money.
1 person can only answer one call at a time. But 1 person can handle upto 10 digital conversations at a time. Which is why they take so long to reply

FD need to remember where their roots were nurtured from.

But surely that person will take 10 times as long to answer each person's query via the digital channel, so the person-hour rate remains the same? I suppose the advantage is that the customer doesn't notice that their wait time is being spread out between text responses, rather than all happening before they get to ask their initial query.

I guess it's all about "time to initial response" rather than "time to complete interaction"

Some queries take longer than others. Just the same as phone calls.

The point is you can have 10 people calling on the phone. Only one will get answered at a time. The other 9 are aware of their wait.
Via digital channels. They are all being dealt with at the same time. So there is no customer perception of waiting in a queue to be answered.

No one likes to hear that they are waiting on the phone.. I really hate it when you are waiting on the phone to be told you can use the digital channels, when the whole reason I'm calling is it is something that you can not do via digital channel...

colsten

born_again said:

Via digital channels. They are all being dealt with at the same time. So there is no customer perception of waiting in a queue to be answered.

I would contest that. When, as it often does, it takes minutes to get an answer to a very simple question, such as "did you see the question I asked above" (to which the answer is obviously yes or no), you realise that you are chatting with either a busy or an incompetent person. In either case, it's an annoying waste of time.  Customers shouldn't be expected to be dim.

Chat can be very effective and productive if the both chat partners concentrate on the chat.

born_again

colsten said:

born_again said:

Via digital channels. They are all being dealt with at the same time. So there is no customer perception of waiting in a queue to be answered.

I would contest that. When, as it often does, it takes minutes to get an answer to a very simple question, such as "did you see the question I asked above" (to which the answer is obviously yes or no), you realise that you are chatting with either a busy or an incompetent person. In either case, it's an annoying waste of time.  Customers shouldn't be expected to be dim.

Chat can be very effective and productive if the both chat partners concentrate on the chat.

But even while you have to wait for the answer. You do not have the perception that they are dealing with other people. As it takes time to type a answer.

Sadly bean counters do not agree with you. They make the decision that a one on one digital chat is not productive enough. As while you are waiting for someone to type something, you can be dealing with another query

Thankfully, they have not found away despite having 2 ears, for you to deal with 2 calls at once 🤣

colsten

born_again said:

But even while you have to wait for the answer. You do not have the perception that they are dealing with other people. As it takes time to type a answer.

Sure, I know it takes time to type an answer (about 1 second for "yes" or "no"),and I am a slow typist myself.  But in decent chat software you can see whether your chat partner is typing.

As I said, I *do* have the perception that I either deal with a busy or incompetent person, and that either are a waste of my time. It is for that reason that I have often terminated a chat and raised a complaint instead. I have, however, had pretty brilliant chat experience with Starling Bank. Santander and Revolut chats, on the other hand, are the pits, as they don't even have humans in the chat their end. I don't have experience with FD chat.

[Deleted User]

The CEO is responding to the raft of one-star reviews on Trustpilot et al. Their telephone response times are truly awful: I know, as I was waiting for over an hour to get through a week ago. The irony here is that they used to be an exceptional telephone banking service.

pafpcg

Dolor said:

The CEO is responding to the raft of one-star reviews on Trustpilot et al. Their telephone response times are truly awful: I know, as I was waiting for over an hour to get through a week ago. The irony here is that they used to be an exceptional telephone banking service.

I know it's only anecdotal, but....

Last Friday at 10:50, I rang the FirstDirect help line because I wanted to know if I could amend the standing order between my FD current account and my FD regular saver myself using online access to transfer a sum greater than the normal £300 limit to "top-up" the regular saver to account for a previous month's £25 minimum transfer.  The call was answered by a helpful person* a couple of seconds after the FD's introductory blurb - it was so quick that I thought it was just another level in their automated response system!  So, I'd say that FD's response time isn't uniformly awful - I'd settle for "variable".

* The response I got was "I don't think so, but why don't you try it now and if it doesn't work, I'll make the change for you?"  So I tried and failed, so she set-up the standing order to transfer £575 this month and then drop to £300 for the remaining 10 monthly transfers.  "Is there anything else I can do?" "Yes, can you do the same for my partner's account?" - which she did and it was all completed in 27 minutes.

george9071

I got this email too but honestly, I haven't had any issues when calling them. I get through to customer services quickly and when I have needed to speak to a different department, I get through within 5 minutes. Much better phone service than a lot of other UK banks.