I bank online, have been for a very long time. It’s great and makes me feel good about saving some trees from all the paper I previously would receive. And, I do have to hand it to many of the financial services companies, my bank included, as they’ve made great strides in the past few years of really improving their online customer experience. But, today, I’ve got to rant.
Why is it that I have such limited information about transactions in my account? Or better yet, why can’t companies that bill me via my debit card provide more context in their transactions? (Probably the real question anyway). In reviewing my checking account this morning, I noticed the following charge…
Checking Transaction Item - Where does this say vision insurance?
Who billed me here and for what? I’ve never, ever done any business with Brokers National. I have no idea who they are or what they do… Are they a financial services company charging me for some investment transaction? Did I buy something in a drunken or tired stupor and can’t remember? Dunno.
So I called up my bank. “We have no additional information for you. But, I can give you their phone number.” “Ok”, I said, “I’ll take it.” I call Brokers National. After talking with the fantastic customer service rep (they really were great), it turns out that Brokers National is an insurance broker and they sell my vision insurance. “Ok”, I say. I do want my vision insurance so I’m worry free at this point.
However…. (here comes the lesson learned for designers, information architects and likely Visa or whomever controls the information that is associated with transactions like this)
Could you please put some more descriptive information on these transactions? What about “Brokers National” says “this is for your vision insurance”? Nothing.
Point is – when you’re designing for consumers that bank online, context is extremely IMPORTANT! If I had more context about the transaction, I could have avoided 30 minutes of phone calls and investigation of this charge in my account. C’mon now, get it together. Just guessing here (sarcasm), but in today’s economy consumers are applying a higher level of scrutiny on each and every transaction. Without the appropriate context on transactions like this, financial services companies, like my bank, will likely see an increase in phone calls to their customer service center. This only increases their operational costs, which they’ll likely pass onto consumers – you know they do, just take a look at all the damn fees they charge you already.
Good information design in online banking sites = savings in cusotmer support and operational expenses for financial services companies. Which, again just guessing here (more sarcasm), also allows them to reinvest their money better in the market and offer a greater competitive advantage in their products and services they sell.
Ok, my rant is over now.
Jason-
Visa is not directly to blame for this issue, the responsibility lies with the vendor of the service to populate the appropriate values to describe the transaction. From your typical merchant services rules:
Granted, the limit in the length of the descriptor goes all the way up the chain to the biggest banking institutions and their legacy AS/400 mainframe systems; but the vendor has the ability to put any values they want to describe the transaction. Brokers National probably has x number of businesses that they collect funds for, but they only have one account where those funds are deposited and they can’t change the descriptor per transaction.
So what are they to do? They can provide more detail in the descriptor as to how the payee can get in touch with them. Here is a good post by 37Signals about how they addressed this issue for all of their credit card transactions by simply adding a website and phone number to the descriptor. With this change, customers can either go to the site or call a phone number to get information about the charge without having to call their banking institution. It is another way for your customers to self serve by simply being transparent with the tools you have at your disposal. And 37signals reduced chargeback 30% with this simple change.
Great insight Trent, thank you. It just goes to show that even the little decisions, like how you use very minimal number characters to describe a transaction, is important in the total experience that a customer has with your product/service. I wonder how, if at all, the banking institutions are upgrading their infrastructure to allow for more information to be provided with transaction detail. I think the article you provided definitely goes to show the importance of context and thinking about the customer experience, good find.
I had to also comment on 37 Signals’ page that they created to support their self service approach to transaction detail. This approach is solid, in my opinion from a user experience architect point of view. They’ve made the most of a limited number of characters in the transaction description statement by using a URL to direct customers to a web page. The web page then provides a plethora of information, providing all the right context and clues as to what the transaction is for. Nice job.
Now I’m wondering how many banking institutions/businesses are actually thinking along these lines? I can’t say that I’ve seen this very often at all. Is this unique?