Being a HDFC bank customer, writing a customer service review is pretty interesting. 🙂
Not many may know that HDFC or The Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited was amongst the first banks to receive an approval from RBI to set up a bank in the private sector.
Without a doubt, HDFC is one of the most popular banks in India.
Okay, without much anticipation let’s dive in to the review part. 😉
Interestingly, HDFC has widespread social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest and SlideShare, although mostly active on Facebook and Twitter.
Element 1 – Tone of Messaging
HDFC has a formal tone of communication on Facebook and Twitter.
Element 2 – Are they sending canned responses, without understanding the context?
Although HDFC does not respond to every query on social media, when they do; they respond to the issue only after understanding it well.
Here are few examples:
Element 3 – Response Time
HDFC has a very high response time, which is not appreciated.
They have a response time of around 277 minutes on Facebook with a response rate of 80%. Also, there are a number of unanswered queries on their page.
On Twitter they have two handles, @HDFC_Bank and @HDFCBank_Cares. HDFCBank_Cares is a dedicated handle for customer complaints and resolution. The response time is 474 Minutes on @HDFC_Bank and 259 Minutes on @HDFCBank_Cares.
And we were not at all surprised when a user complained about not being responded by HDFC, ahh thankfully in this case they did respond the second time. 😛
Also, one thing that I observed is that HDFC only responds to negative queries but never appreciates or acknowledges a positive response from fans.
A typical example would be:
Element 4 – Is brand sending personalized replies?
Yes, every interaction is on a personal level by tagging the user. Also, the agent puts their name at the end of the message- a good norm.
Element 5 – Is brand following up on the complaints?
We did not come across any conversations on follow ups from HDFC. Rather there are a lot of queries which have not been answered.
Element 6 – Is brand answering to all the queries?
HDFC has a number of queries which have not been answered.
Element 7 – Is the brand present on major complaint forums?
Mouthshut.com which is one of the biggest online complaint forums in India has around 568 reviews of HDFC, mostly negatives 🙁 , however none have been responded by the brand.
Element 8 – Is brand sending duplicate replies?
No HDFC does not send duplicate replies; they customize their messages to each and every query- a good practice indeed.
Not to deny the fact that among all the banks in India, HDFC is the most social bank, at least on social media (check our report).
However they do have a lot of rooms for improvement. Even though they have a fan base of over 2.2M, their engagement rate is only 0.27% and although their posts are perfectly timed, they could get a little more creative and interact in a more curious way. 🙁
Being a Community Manager myself, I believe the most important factor in building an online community is being a part of the people, when the fans feel special about being a part of your brand. As of now, HDFC is only responding to negatives and not leveraging the positives, not even acknowledging- which is bad. 🙁
A few examples:
Personally I have not faced any major issues with HDFC, but after going through the responses from other customers, I guess I will have to start being a little cautious.
I know you guys have a lot to share on your experience with your bank. Do let us know in the comments below. 🙂