Thailand Financial News

OCBC Bank first in Asia to recognise and prompt customers to update their contact details via ATMs
Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (“OCBC Bank”) has become the first bank in Asia to launch an interactive ATM service that recognises and prompts customers to update their contact details, offering them greater convenience as well as enhancing the productivity at the bank.

The bank recognises customers who have not updated their contact details for the past year or who have been uncontactable for the past three months, and prompts them to make any changes every time they visit an in-branch ATM. Those whose mails or emails from the bank have been returned will also be recognised. Customers can also initiate the update themselves. “The new ATM service is a meaningful move by us to cater to our customers’ mobile lifestyle needs and reap efficiency gains in our operations ,” said Mr
Patrick Chew, OCBC Bank’s Head of Delivery, Group Consumer Financial Services. “This unprecedented interaction between our customers and ATMs leverages on a powerful customer relationship management platform, which was launched at our branch ATMs in May 2004 and has since been integrated with our other banking systems.” Describing the situation today, Mr Chew said customers sometimes forget to update the bank on changes in their contact details. This results in them not receiving correspondences and possibly missing out on important financial updates. At the same time, every month, the bank also handles thousands of requests by customers to update their contact details. Mr Chew said: “By enabling our customers to update their contact details via ATMs, this frees up a tremendous amount of time for both them and our customer service officers to perform more value-added financial services. In addition, this service ensures customers receive our correspondences as they are reminded to do so by our ATMs. With ATMs being a frequently-visited channel by customers, any information gap that may exist can now be plugged in a hassle-free way.” Current trends indicate that the average bank customer uses the ATM about once a week and executes about 80% of all his transactions through the machine. It is hence convenient for customers to include the updating of their contact details into their normal activities, rather than having to queue up at a branch or log on to the internet. “Come next year, we hope that the majority of our customers will perform their updates via ATMs. The service is part of our continual efforts to raise the bar for our self-service channels , enabling us to manage the relationship with our customers in an intelligent way.” Mr Chew said. –www.theasianbanker.com (November 30 2006)–