Can SMS banking improve plunging satisfaction levels?

In a bid to improve plummeting customer satisfaction levels while also cutting costs, an increasing number of banks plan to provide text message services in areas such as loans and mortgages to supplement existing basic balance alerts.

According to a report by Javelin Strategy & Research, customer satisfaction with banks has dropped to 79% this year compared with 92% in 2004. A study from Accenture also revealed that loyalty had fallen among customers of just under three out of five banks.

As a result, Beth Robertson, director of payments research at Javelin told PNT Marketing Services that such organisations needed to improve their customer service levels and "assume a more visible and pro-customer stance".

Colleague Mark Schwanhausser, a senior analyst for multi-channel financial services, added: "In order to give customers a greater sense of financial control and regain and foster long-term trust, providers must clearly lay out options in language that consumers can understand."

But according to Juniper Research, the humble text message could also have a role to play here. Howard Wilcox, author of a report entitled ‘Mobile Banking: Strategies, Applications and Markets 2010-2015’ predicted that the number of mobile text messages sent by banks was likely to tripe to 90 billion over the next five years.

"Our research found that messaging is a win-win for banks. They can improve customer service significantly, while simultaneously eliminating the cost of servicing customer enquiries placed with call centres," he said.

Although more than 80% of banks currently offer some form of mobile banking, many have yet to exploit the channel to the full, he added. One of the key aims of mobile banking, however, was to encourage the uptake of cost-effective self-service activity, which meant that a wider range of services were likely to appear over the next few years.