Customer service and satisfaction

Our main businesses – Irish Life Retail, Irish Life Corporate Business and permanent tsb - have customer satisfaction programmes in place. Irish Life Retail and permanent tsb use an independent research company – The Leadership Factor - to track customer satisfaction levels each year. Actions are taken to address the issues raised by customers in the research. Irish Life Corporate Business track service levels directly with brokers and also use independent research from Milward Brown IMS.

• Customer Satisfaction Programme Updates

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  Our customer satisfaction index continues to be the key measure that drives the Intouch customer 1st programme.

  Our final customer satisfaction index score for 2009 was 78.4%, 0.6% below the target of 79.0% and 1.7% below the score for 2008. However, the trend of reducing scores in 2008 reached a low of 76.7% in Q1, 2009, and since then the trend has been upwards. So while we did not reach our target of 79.0% for the year, each of the underlying five transaction scores that make up the index has shown a marked improvement as the year progressed.

  Irish Life Corporate Business

  

  The Irish Life Corporate Business (ILCB) Customer Service Index (CSI) measures actual performance against target service levels across 12 key administrative services carried out for clients.

  Despite handling a substantially higher volume of transactions in 2009, the CSI performance was very strong during the year, breaking through the 90% barrier for the first time. The improvement in 2009 was mainly driven by the completion of a catch up on long outstanding renewal items, substantial improvement to the new business process and faster handling of customer queries.

  permanent tsb

  

  Measuring the impact: We have three methods of assessing our performance on customer service:

  • Our annual Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) where 2,500 customers are asked their views on our service across 28 measures of performance as shown in the table above;
  • Our nightly moments of truth surveys where customers are asked to comment on their branch experiences within 24 hours of attending the branch (10,000 customers surveyed in 2009) and;
  • Participation in a pan European retail banking service quality study involving over 40 other banks in 17 countries.

  In our daily surveys, more than 80% of our customers say that they are positively disposed towards giving us a recommendation. In the European service quality study, our satisfaction rating in 2009 was 19% better than the average score across the 40 participating banks.

  Further information on our customer agenda is available in our 2009 CR Report

• Plain English

• The Plain English Campaign is an organisation that specialises in testing the text and layout of documents for ease of understanding. It awards a Crystal Mark for documents that meet their standards. The Crystal Mark is recognised internationally as a symbol of clarity. To meet these standards, each piece of literature is panel tested with a group of adults in Ireland to make sure that they understand what they are reading. The Crystal Mark is valid for two years. This means the document must be submitted again to the Plain English campaign for inspection and renewal of the Crystal Mark.

  We recognise that financial products by their nature can be difficult for people to understand. Research that we conducted in 2005 found that 7 out of 10 adults in Ireland claim that they don't read financial product brochures due to the use of jargon and small print. Anything we can do that helps to improve clarity and understanding is welcome.

  Irish Life Retail:

  • is the only financial company in Ireland and the UK to have "Plain Englished" its full product suite of literature;
  • was the first financial services company in Ireland and the UK to be awarded the Honesty Mark;
  • has the highest number of Honesty Marks held by any company, anywhere in the world.

  In 2009, the campaign chose Irish Life as the overall winner of the Plain English Campaign 30th anniversary award. Irish Life was selected ahead of 12,000 other organisations from 80 countries as the best organisation at living up to the principles of Plain English in the 30 years since the campaign started.

  Presenting the special award to Irish Life, the founder of the Plain English Campaign, Chrissie Maher, said: “In my 40 years of campaigning, Irish Life has stood out for giving clear, honest and straightforward information to their customers. I have seen Irish Life’s determination to get it right and the struggles to find a balance between what the legal advisors say and what customers want and need from a service they can understand and trust. I believe Irish Life has managed to balance both sides very well. It has set the standard for all organisations.”

  The Honesty Mark
  Trust is an important issue in any industry, but is particularly significant for financial services. Customers need to know they have all the facts at their fingertips. The Honesty Mark gives customers this confidence.

  The Honesty Mark is a further enhancement to the Plain English mark. It is a tangible guarantee to our customers that everything in the literature is true, is not contradicted by any other document and is written in an upfront manner.

  Transparency of Charging
  Also, in each one of our 92 permanent tsb branches we have brochures on display setting out details of personal and business banking charges.

  Product Snapshot
  In line with our policy of making our products as transparent as possible, we have developed a ‘Product Snapshot' for our retail life products to show the key features of a product at a glance. These include the level of risk attaching to the product and whether the initial amount invested is guaranteed or not.

  

• Customer support in a recession

• We recognise that our customers face challenges as a result of the recession and we have procedures in place to engage with customers who may face difficulty in repaying debt.

  As a member of the Irish Banking Federation (IBF), we are committed to working with customers currently experiencing financial difficulties in exploring their options and achieving a sustainable and mutually acceptable solution. The IBF-MABS Operating Protocol: Working together to manage debt has been in effect since September 2009. The Protocol allows IBF creditors and MABS money advisers acting on behalf of their clients to work together effectively to help their customers/ clients deal with their debt issues.

  In addition, permanent tsb has issued a “Home Loan Charter” setting out the options available to customers who might be struggling to meet repayments and falling into arrears. These options vary from case to case but include a full or partial suspension of mortgage repayments, a term extension and arrears capitalisation.

Disability access
We have an objective to achieve full accessibility within the constraint of reasonable cost. This is also a legal requirement under the Equal Status Act 2000.

Buildings
In 2006, we began a programme of works to improve accessibility to our office buildings.

Prior to 2006, there was no disabled access from the underground car park in the Irish Life Centre where our group head office is located to street level or from street level to another office suite in the Centre. In 2006, with funds provided by all the tenants in the Centre we commissioned and installed two new lifts and a number of disabled car parking spaces are also now available.

Since 2006, we have completed disability access works on a number of permanent tsb branch offices - some as part of refurbishment works. We assess that there are now three remaining branches that are not fully accessible.

ATMs
We assess that approximately 75% of our ATMs are positioned at a level (950mm) that would make them accessible to wheelchair users.

Hearing aid loop systems
A hearing aid loop system is a device that transmits sound directly from a microphone to a hearing aid. This allows for clear pick-up of what is said - there is no need for a raised voice and there is no interference from background noise. Loop systems are commonly used in cinemas, conference centres and other large venues. The range of the system can be set to suit the location and for business premises, e.g., in a bank branch, the range is typically set to a maximum of one metre.

We have installed loop systems in all of our office buildings and branches.

Websites
We have installed Browse Aloud software a number of our group websites. This software reads web pages aloud for people who find it difficult to read online. This is suitable for people with visual impairments, low levels of literacy or who do not have English as a first language.

Our Irish Life and Permanent group website - www.irishlifepermanent.ie - complies with all of the Priority Level 1 criteria of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 1.0.).