Hats off to Virgin – great processes……

For many years I have been bleating on about the importance of account opening processes and making them simple from your customers perspective. Well I took the opportunity to test this when I went on an account opening spree around 4 banks. My own bank SAN was not part of this as I bank with them now. Of course I didn’t leave my chair and with the aid of my iPad I went to work.\r\n\r\nIn terms of satisfaction with the experience, the speed, the clarity, the confidence that my money would be safe, the lack of bureaucracy then one bank stood head and shoulders above the others – Virgin Money. Maybe it’s because they are still newish, maybe it’s down to lack of legacy systems (I dont know!), maybe they just have a smart team of people. Actually in my opinion it will be down to leadership and their customer centric approach. When you design these things from a customer point of view you hit the spot.\r\n\r\nAs it happens I then had to close the account. I did that all online and the money was back in Santander within 3 hours. A human intervention was required and I received a call from a very courteous and capable lady in their fraud team. This was an\r\neasy customer driven conversation and she definitely knew how to spot if I was a fraudster.\r\n\r\nThere was another interesting dimension as to how banks implement the need to identify you properly. I actually rang Virgin to check this out as they were by far the simplest. Again a very courteous lady assured me they would be doing their checks and would be in touch if required. Another bank sent a huge bunch of papers to me and asked for a certified copy of my passport!!!\r\n\r\nWell done to Virgin.