Satisfying numbers are made to measure

If it’s nice for the community of mutuals to hear such verdicts on the whole sector, it’s important for individual societies such as Hinckley & Rugby to know what their own customers think and have to say about their experiences as members/customers.

That’s why every single month data is sought from new customers joining the Society and existing customers opening additional savings accounts and/or remortgaging with Hinckley & Rugby. We’re texting new mortgagees immediately after their advance, to get that immediacy of feedback whilst the experience is fresh in their minds.

The Society also religiously asks what mortgage intermediaries think about the way the business they bring to Hinckley & Rugby is dealt with and processed.

Every quarter of 2018 saw at least 98 per cent of savings customers say they would recommend Hinckley & Rugby. In the third quarter it was 100 per cent.

In some areas perfect scores were also recorded for how well staff were able to answer customers’ questions, ensuring they fully understood their new accounts. Mortgage customers were also largely happy, with 89 per cent happy to recommend H&R to others.

With mortgage intermediaries, the Society tracks a Net Promotor Score (NPS) which adds the positive responses to the question ‘how likely is it that you would recommend Hinckley & Rugby to a friend or colleague’ and subtracts the negative answers. An NPS above zero shows more intermediaries would recommend the Society than would not.

The NPS was +56 in the three months from November 2018 to January 2019. The same period a year earlier garnered an NPS of +24.

More than two thirds of the intermediaries said they were ‘extremely likely’ to use H&R in the future. Another fifth said that was ‘likely’.

The Smart Money People report found building societies scored particularly well when measured on people themes such as face-to-face access, skills and knowledge, meeting expectations and manual underwriting.

The increasing complexity of people’s family and working lives, away from the simplicity of the linearly progressing careers of their parents’ generation, led us in 2017 to establish a daily meeting of senior decision makers to consider complex mortgage applications.

Up to 20 cases are now being individually reviewed each day at the Mortgage Referral Committee by directors and managers, including the chief executive. Increasingly applicants are seeking the certainty of a fixed rate. In January 2019 54 per cent of our lending was on fixed rates, historically it has been 45 per cent.

As well as hard numbers, Hinckley & Rugby’s own monthly research seeks comments.

The newest comments from savings customers include ‘very impressed’, ‘your staff were brilliant’, ‘easy and straightforward’ and ‘always cheerful and helpful’.

Comments from intermediaries praised ‘common sense lending’, ‘great service’, ‘very flexible’ criteria, ‘underwriting in one go’, ‘personal contact’ and the ‘unbelievably good’ experience.

Those comments are nice to hear, but it is in the constructive criticisms we also receive that we can find ways to evolve and improve, to be quicker, more accessible, more responsive and better equipped and willing to evolve as customers’ lives continue to change.

We must never become complacent. Consumer expectations are constantly increasing. So we need to review this internal feedback alongside how our processes are designed from a member perspective, what is happening in the external environment within and beyond our own industry, as well as what changes we expect in the future from emerging technologies.

We can then best understand what we need to strive for to maintain and improve the experiences of our members going forward.