Early in his 15-year tenure as DBS chief executive, Piyush Gupta put customer experience at the heart of his transformation of the bank, empowering even junior staff to take decisions to improve that experience.
It was to be an enduring effort. Today, the bank is renowned for its ethos of Making Banking Joyful, with the entire organisation increasingly orientated towards excellence in customer service, and winning Euromoney’s award as Asia’s best for customer experience.
The results are plain to see. Alongside rising organic customer acquisitions, DBS’s consumer and wealth management customer satisfaction scores published in its annual report have gone from 3.76 in 2012 to 4.4 in 2024, a record high.
Especially in Gupta’s early years, support from the top was essential in implementing difficult but necessary changes to improve customer experience – and for good reason. “We cannot have good business outcomes if our customer experience is not up to the mark, because customer experience is a very strong predictor of loyalty to the bank,” notes Yvonne Lau, DBS head of CX in consumer banking.
It is now around 10 years since Gupta pushed for DBS to bring its digital experience in line with big Chinese and US tech companies, spurring a transformation not just of the app but also of the back-end technology.
Over the past three years, DBS has gone to the next level by restructuring its teams around customer journeys rather than products and capabilities. Marketing, legal, contact centre and cards teams have reorientated for customers who might be exploring what the bank can offer, applying for products, transacting or seeking help.
Staff are now accountable for the entire customer journey and rewarded accordingly. The bank believes the changes are a large part of why it saw strong improvements in customer engagement and market share last year.
Over the past three years, DBS has gone to the next level by restructuring its teams around customer journeys rather than products and capabilities
Improving customer service is impossible without feedback. DBS measures hundreds of customer touchpoints, resulting in thousands of surveys every month in an unusual level of detail. Those then get collated into average indicators that are shared right up to the executive committee, so underperformance can be effectively addressed in a timely manner.
Crucially, these efforts encompass not only the experience on the app but also in the call centre and branch – targeting reductions in branch waiting times, for example, after its acquisition of Citi’s consumer business in Taiwan. It has also made improvements in customer service officers’ call-handling time thanks to its new gen AI CSO Assist tool.
“A lot of the empathy that our customer need from us comes from human connection,” says Lau. “We moved to digital before other banks and that puts us at an advantage. We continue to build digital expertise. However, in an environment of an erosion of trust, we recognise that we cannot let down on our physical presence.”
DBS’s Singapore mobile wallet PayLah! marked its 10th year in service last year, hitting a record of almost 42 million logins a month. The app now integrates a whole gamut of stamp cards, deals and rewards in an ecosystem spanning retail, entertainment, travel and rewards, as well as offering peer-to-peer payments.
Alongside things like new anti-fraud features, the bank has also taken steps to try to democratise access to wealth management via its NAV Planner app, using AI features that nudge customers towards better financial behaviour, while offering advice on how to manage their savings.
“It’s financial planning for retail customers, on tap,” says Lau.
