The Royal Bank of Canada has various reputations depending on who you talked to, and who they talked to at one narrow point in their lives. Now, I’m all for judging, but everyone makes a mistake now and again. There is no reason why you can’t go back to improved customer service. Even I still fly Air Canada.

Feel the Love

Over the years my experience with the Royal Bank has been nothing short of lovely. Even the student loans collection guy was sweet. But my tale of weekend banking on Saturday is a pretty good example of a satisfying user experience.

It always starts online…

I had recently sold my house and was looking to do some bill payments and potentially get an RSP before the tax cut off. Normally, web banking is my final destination. I deftly attacked several bills and transferred money onto my credit card. Much ease of navigation was to be found and everything was labeled in familiar brand colours, but not too overpowering with plenty of white space. Sadly, my request turned out to require more information. A link and message informed me to call customer service. Booooo I thought, phone customer service and voice automated menu set.

Digression:

A few years back, the Royal Bank decided it wanted to do a web site re-design. It changed the classic personal savings/chequing/investment list-like layout to a grouped slightly more graphical layout with some additional features. Presumably, they had tracking research that lead them to believe that people lacked important information from the older view, and this would be a better user experience. I completely hated this layout and found the older one to be far easier to read and get my information at a glance. RBC being the smart little bunnies they are, kept a link to ‘all account balances’ directly on the new front page which brings the user into the older view which they cleaned up to have more defined lines and better anti aliasing. I always click directly through and am pleased to not have lost my familiar layout. Good user experience indeed.

New Royal Bank home page layout

Classic Royal Bank home page layout

It didn’t suck, I was shocked.

Back to phone system hell. It was not hell. I was asked to speak English or Français, the menu options were short, and I found my needed selection within two levels. I was always told what to do if I wanted back to the last menu or wanted to hear the options again in a timely manner. Nothing worse than lag on an automated phone menu. There was a ten second hold time during which no nauseating music played at me and I did not feel as though I should burst into sporadic waltz. When the client representative answered ‘Shawn or Sean’ and I explained my web directed reasons for calling he sorted me out quite quickly. We were able to update my investment profile and buy me an RSP within 10 minutes. Given a similar expedition to the bank itself often takes thirty minutes, this was remarkable. ‘Shawn’ was pretty friendly and cracked some dry jokes too, which is always a bonus.

Back to the web!

Victorious, I waited the 48 hours for the transaction to show up on my web site and went about my normal dreck. All my banking was sorted and then I received snail mail confirmation of my purchase for the joy of filing. This was one, but I have many love stories for the Royal Bank. I’ll try to resist the public displays of affection.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Web to Real Life. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.