Customers

We ensure that integrity, trust and respect – core elements of Fair Dealing – are embedded in all aspects of the customer relationship. This can be seen from how we structure our products and services, in our marketing and sales strategies, to our after-sales care.

We ensure Fair Dealing remains central to our corporate culture by:

• offering products and services that are suitable for our customers;
• ensuring our colleagues give quality advice and appropriate recommendations;
• providing clear, relevant and timely information so that our customers can make informed financial decisions; and
• dealing with feedback in an independent, effective and prompt manner.

Several internal oversight committees, including the Fair Dealing Guidelines Committee and the Product Sales Committee, review our products, services and processes to ensure we treat our customers fairly. While these committees provide formal oversight, understanding and following the Fair Dealing guidelines is the responsibility of all of us at UOB. Awareness programmes help spread the importance of the message and everyone, including senior management, must complete a Fair Dealing e-learning module every year.

We conduct Fair Dealing workshops annually with various business and support units to examine the feedback given to us by our customers. Using this insight, we identify opportunities for improvement. In 2015, 10 improvement action plans were implemented by our Customer Advocacy and Service Quality team to ensure we fulfil our Fair Dealing commitments and to enhance the customer experience.

We also have an independent review process to ensure that customer complaints and concerns are managed appropriately.

How our customers perceive the quality of our Fair Dealing processes is important to us. We seek their views through regular surveys covering all customer segments. The findings are used to improve our service standards to ensure we uphold strongly our commitment to treat our customers fairly.

At every point in addressing our customers’ financial needs, whether for their personal or business matters, we look to provide them with the right solution. To be able to deliver upon this requires an unwavering focus on ensuring the products and services we provide, and how we harness technology and engage our minds all lead to making the lives of our customers better.

As an integral part of this, we hold Agile workgroups to build, to test and to pilot the products and services our customers require. This process has been complemented by our use of data analytics to help us understand and appreciate in sharp detail the needs and preferences of our customers. For example, by understanding where, when and how our customers use our ATMs, we are able to place the machines in locations that are most convenient for our customers. We have also reduced the time they spend on ATM withdrawals through the use of a single button for their most frequent withdrawal amounts.

The UOB Mighty mobile app is another example of how we provide our customers with the right solution. The UOB Mighty app enables our customers to conduct their most frequent mobile banking transactions – paying bills and transferring funds – in a few easy steps. The app’s dining feature makes it possible for our customers to receive recommendations on, and make bookings at, restaurants based on their preferred cuisine and location. This feature was designed around our customers’ dining habits and interests and has proven extremely popular.

We provide our customers with solutions such as the UOB Mighty app to meet their lifestyle needs and preferences.

We also use digital channels to provide our customers with easy access to new services, products and promotions. Our use of social media, through the likes of WeChat and LINE in China and Thailand respectively, has seen more than three million followers of UOB’s activities. This gives us a better understanding of our customers’ preferences to tailor solutions to their needs.

We are making significant investments into nurturing Asia’s financial technology startups through The FinLab. This joint venture aims to help develop innovative startups that are focused on creating solutions which we believe will make banking more intuitive and simpler for our customers.

Ensuring our people have the knowledge, skills and confidence to give our customers clear guidance is essential. Our core service training programme shows new hires how to make every customer experience delightful. Participants are trained to recognise our customers’ different needs and expectations, as well as the importance our customers place on our going beyond the call of duty. In Singapore alone, our people dedicated more than 8,000 hours in training sessions last year to hone their craft in service excellence.

The key to knowing our customers personally is to ensure that in every interaction we have with them, we observe and listen carefully and thereafter apply our knowledge in innovative and meaningful ways to help them.

We also draw upon data analytics, behavioural economics and profiling to refine the development of our customised products and services.

In 2015, insight from consumer research and interactions was used to launch an improved UOB Personal Internet Banking service which made transactions easier and faster to use. UOB’s revamped online banking service consolidated more than 80 services and grouped them into five categories so that customers could easily view their account balances and intuitively complete their transactions.

For our business clients, one of the ways in which we have anticipated their needs is through UOB’s Foreign Direct Investment Advisory Unit. Our analysis of growing intra-regional investment was the basis on which we created the unit in 2011. As more clients sought to expand into new markets, we knew that to help ensure their success, a system and network of partners on the ground were necessary. This foresight has since enabled more than 700 clients to access a seamless service that has made their cross-border expansion possible.

Making banking feel consistent across every channel

As part of our omni-channel strategy, UOB offers a range of options for our customers to conduct their banking with us in person, through self-service machines, over the phone or online. We conduct extensive research and testing to ensure every touch point makes banking easy and convenient for them.

Every element of the customer experience is reviewed to ensure we meet our performance standards. These standards include minimal branch waiting times, fast service response time and high system availability.

Setting the standard for customer service

In 2015, we received 12,800 customer compliments in Singapore alone, a four per cent increase over the previous year.

UOB is also recognised at The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) Excellent Service Awards (EXSA). In 2015, 998 UOB employees were commended at the EXSA awards for their service excellence. UOB also received the highest number of Star Awards among the 13 participating banks and financial services institutions for the fifth year running.

998 of our employees were commended for service excellence at the ABS EXSA 2015.

We also take part in industry surveys, including the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore, a respected industry benchmark administered by the Singapore Workforce Development Agency and Singapore Management University. In 2015, our score of 71.6 was an improvement over the previous year and above the national average. Our Call Centre in Singapore also won seven awards at the Contact Centre Association of Singapore’s annual awards ceremony held in October.