Retail banks have invested heavily in creating better and more appealing products and services focused on their front-line contacts, but the importance of operations in the end-to-end value chain has been mostly overlooked. Excellence in operations is how we describe the process for retail banking clients getting back to basics and focusing on what really matters to their customers.

Operations are traditionally seen as cost centres with low-skilled personnel that deal with high volume, non-value adding processes. However, it is these processes that, if not done accurately and efficiently, can generate the errors and failings in customer service that will result in customer attrition.

EY research indicates that customers are more willing to switch providers, something that will be made easier in the future by new regulation. Over 60% of European customers who recently left their main bank cite service quality as the main cause. Operational service failures are often the root cause resulting in customers turning away from their main bank.

Excellence in operations links banking operations to customer service. It is based on 10 critical customer interactions ranging from account opening, switching and closing to dealing with complaints, changes to address, lost and stolen cards.