Dear Standard Bank, Internet banking division
Hi,
The improvements to internet banking have some bugs, it seems.
I have had the experience twice now during "once off payments" that I get an error of "Internet banking is currently unavailable" when I go through with a transaction. It seems to be related to sending payment confirmations. It is bad behaviour because the transaction goes through, but the user (me) does not get a valid indication the payment has succeeded until a notification (sms, or email) comes through, or manually checks if there is a mention on the account transacted from/to.
I would also like to say that some of the "improvements" are actually a degradation, in terms of usability. The screen is more cluttered with graphics and text, and on my screen (which is running at 1280x800) has information pushed "below the fold". I would suggest that whoever is in charge of usability and new features looks into buying a copy of "Defensive Web Design" (http://www.amazon.com/Defensive-Design-Web-improve-messages/dp/073571410...), and other texts discussing usability on the web. While not absolutely correct, the EyeTRAC studies are a good reference point.
I (as a web developer) find it depressing that a service I am paying for has degraded usability, when the changes were supposedly improvements. It is not a wholely poor experience (there are some improvements, but my general experience is that the interface has become more confusing, not less confusing)
I am posting this email on my blog, and you are welcome to respond publicly (in the form of a comment), or as an email response.
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Brad Whittington
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Hi Brad
I would be very very surprised if you get any response from Standard Bank and even more surprised if that response is one that makes you feel like anyone there gives a shit or has a clue.
Standard Bank used to be a very good bank but in the last year or so their customer service has dropped radically and their website and online banking has suffered from what appears to be a lack of concern for the customers experience.
Have a look at Capitec bank... I'm moving shortly.
j.
Tell them what they did right too -- don't just tell them they did something right and then withold the information about what it was.
I quite like their new beneficiary grouping function -- and also that they finally allow beneficiaries to be sorted.
I haven't tried a once-off payment yet via the new interface, so I haven't had any issues so far.
I hope you get some sort of response from them, but chances are you'll have to send them a follow-up message written with a more curt tone. I know that the last time I had issues with them, I did.
On the plus side, at least they have cottoned on to some sort of usability...something that is still woefully overdue in many quarters. Perhaps the operations you tried were not something they tested in their set usability tasks, or maybe they didn't recruit geeks of a pedantic nature ;) I know for our usability we tried not to get any 'high' internet users, as they have requirements far and above what the average user expects.
Hey- at least you'll never be average.
Hi Brad
Standard Bank appreciates the feedback on the recent changes made to Internet banking. Positive feedback gives us the sense of satisfaction and achievement; and this inspires us to continue doing the right things. Negative feedback gives us an opportunity to review and address those issues that our customers are not happy with. As mentioned by jenbug above, the challenge that we have is that we have a single platform to satisfy the needs of a wide range of our customers. When we design our Internet banking application, the composition of the groups of people used during usability testing covered the range of our types of users (novice, savvy, personal, business, etc) and at the end of the day the design eventually implemented satisfied the majority of the user requirements raised. Everyone has different tastes and, as one can understand, it is quite a feat to satisfy everyone. We admit we are not at that stage yet, but we will keep trying.
Addressing the specific issues raised;
On the payment confirmations on once-off payments, the error “Internet banking is currently unavailable”
Response: We are aware of this error and we are in the final stages of testing a solution to this. We will be implementing this solution in the next couple of days.
“The screen is more cluttered with graphics and text, and on my screen (which is running at 1280x800) has information pushed below the fold’ ”.
Response: We are in the process of neatening up some of the screens, this will be available as soon as testing is successfully completed.
We welcome the feedback, keep it coming, we view improvements to usability as an ongoing exercise.
Regards
Itai
Online Banking
Standard Bank
Thanks for the feedback, and I look forward to the improvements. I only complain because I want the services I use to be the best, and I do understand the difficulty in rolling out such massive operations. That said, being more transparent about issues that do exist, and where there are solutions in the pipeline is a lot better than the useless banners saying "Internet banking is improving". You could give private news feeds to logged in users, making it public where you know you have shortcomings, and what you are doing to rectify them. Alternatively, services like http://getsatisfaction.com are designed for interacting with customers, for both good and bad feedback.
The point is, make sure you respond (somehow) to how people are feeling about your service. I have sent emails in the past and never got a response back, of any kind (and it seems like this is a common experience). A response could even be a notice on the front page when you log in, with current major issues you are dealing with.
You have a choice, pretending like your service is best, and making customers feel like they are whingers who will never get a response (because they are wrong anyway), or being honest about the shortcomings and the issues faced. I am a customer, I pay for the service, I have a right to having my voice heard (positive and negative), and when you only publish positive feedback on your site, then you turn me into the bad guy, the complainer.
Just my 10c worth.
Is your commentary worth 10c because of inflation? ;-)
I got a final response from SB, saying they had forwarded my suggestions (above) to the R&D dept. as they are looking at implementing customer suggestions. I am not going to reprint their email verbatim as I never asked/got permission.
I really hope they can get to grips with the "read write web", and crowd sourcing research.
SB emailed me again with a response calling into question my man-hood (jokes, their emails are marked as confidential, so I can't republish it, but I can republish my response, which might give clues as to their original email):
Hi,
All this new fangled technology is quite confusing. You are welcome to spare the condescending attitude (Oh look, another silly user, unhappy about change), and actually address usability of internet banking (because it is far from simple, and violates the principle of least surprise on a number of occasions).
It is true that change is the hardest thing to swallow, but, for example, when I upgraded my PC to the newest version of Ubuntu, I welcomed the changes because they were improvements, they decreased the amount of time it takes me to do my day job. Changing my mental flow, and adpating to the new processes was easy because the changes made sense, and so they got my buy in.
You can get used to a yak kicking you in the head every morning, it doesn't mean it is the best way to start a day.
I would like to help though, I do usability as a day job, and I would like to be involved in user trials in future developments, so I can become a resource, and not a prick who argues on the internet.
Darb, you grow up so quickly. These rants are starting to sound like the "Big Rant to Microsoft, Dell and Toshiba in 2006". I'd say you keep at it, though you chances of any constructive responses are unlikely. Though the web dev team for SB is most probably going to read this blog entry and hate on you. I'd welcome their comments... Though chances are they're just puppets for the big corporate entity and probably sit in meetings saying "this is a bad idea" and then someone in a suit saying "I like the colours and the bold text, and why do we need to fund support for this foxfire thing?"
Props to vhata for the link...
http://hijinksensue.com/2007/11/29/robots-are-everywhere-and-they-eat-ol...
Just read your other SB post. It's really irritating when these things happen in succession. I was trying to purchase a url yesterday for some R3000, and some banks have added an extra confirmation in for credit card purchases which bombed out the transaction.
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