Abbey Business – customer service quailty standards being met?

Thanks to Jasmine Birtles of MoneyMagpie in her article ‘The misery of Abbey Business‘I don’t feel so alone in my desperation and frustration of Abbey Business Banking. I ma grateful to her for sharing her personal experience. I too have had problems in accessing my money deposited with Abbey Business in the UK. Abbey is part of the Santander banking group allegedly one of the Top 10 global banking institutions.

I have been obliged to ring them 6 times today (no regard for the customer’s valuable time) and I have been obliged to repreat a lengthy series of security questions (no regard for the customer’s level of acceptance, tolerance and frustration levels).

Previously I was offered a telephone reply by an Abbey supervisor or departmental manager. No telephone contact with me was made. To add to my injuries an unprofessional member the Abbey Business fraud department, who declined to offer her name (which I suppose is understandable – why publicise that you are a bad employee) and made the decision by herself to terminate the call despite.

Finally today I’ve been told that the Abbey Business ecommerce team have identified the problem (this is after other members of the Abbey Business team had previously identified the problem and failed to resolve the issue affecting my business account), and I’ve been told it will take the system 24 hours to update.

All in all I have had very little access to my business accounts in three weeks.

It is a good job I have been able to survive in the meantime, because 98% of all businesses would not have been able to trade through such poor level of business banking service. I would be most interested in the comments of a Professional business adviser in business banking, and his suggestions?

In conclusion, without prejudice, here is a summary of the Abbey Business bank customer experience I have witnessed. I am unable to say whether other Abbey Bank customers would experience the same below par levels of customer service or what impact that it might have on their business performance. How many businesses would be willing to chance it?

1.  After I reported my involvement is a fraud phishing scam, Abby responded quickly to stop any transactions out of the account. They were unable to set account quickly to keep me going, but offered to transfer monies to a new account to keep me in business. Fortunately I had just opened another business bank account with another bank. Yet the monies transferred by the Abbey representative never arrived in the new account, and were returned or transferred to my new Abbey current account 5 days later with no explanation ever given.

2. I was told I had failed a security check (quite hard since it was me, and I do not believe I had behaved differently from any other occasion.) I was threatened with my account being put on hold.

3. I rang to make a complaint. I was promised a telephone response by a Manager, which I never received.

4. I rang today 6 times to get access to moving monies. I was passed from Abbey Business Banking to ecommerce department and back again. The Abbey Ecommerce member of staff did not advise me why he asked me to return to the main department, nor did he speak to a member of staff to instruct them what to do. As a result I was left “hanging in abeyance”. Eventually a helpful member Greg, told me that he had contacted ecommerce again and they have identified the problem and it should be resolved within 24 hours.

What impression can I have with the low level of customer service I have received?

I am sure someone senior on the Santander banking group would be scandalised to learn of my Abbey Business customer experience.

As a business analyst, and business consultant involved in best practice would do as well, I could implement several quality control measure to transform the customer experience and at the same time vastly reduce time wasted, simultaneously massively increase individual productivity, and undoubtedly staff morale as well.