Omnichannel Fiasco #1: Standard Chartered Credit Card

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I recently went through two omnichannel experiences, one that started well but went downhill thereafter, and another that was a disaster right from the beginning.

Before I deep dive into my experiences, here’s a quick working definition of omnichannel:

Omnichannel is where a single business process is deliberately split across multiple channels so that each channel does what it’s really good at and every channel hop appears natural to the customer.

Shopping behaviors like ROBO (Research Online Buy Offline), Showrooming (Research in store and buy online) and ROMBOW (Research On Mobile, Buy On Web) are a few examples of omnichannel. Click here for more on omnichannel, especially about how it differs from multichannel.

In this post, I’ll describe my first omnichannel fiasco.

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I recently applied online for a Standard Chartered Bank credit card.

After filling out my personal information, I came to the stage where I had to submit KYC documentation.

Now, I know that you can scan documents and upload them online but I always have a problem with scanning passport, drivers license and any other document used for ID and address proof – the photograph inevitably appears smudged. Therefore, I’m not a fan of online uploads of KYC documentation.

Looks like I’m not alone since the portal didn’t have any UPLOAD DOCUMENTS button at all. Instead, it asked me to grant an appointment when someone from the bank would visit me and collect my documents in person.

I loved it that here was a bank that anticipated my preferences. I clicked the appointment button and checked an available slot on the calendar. It was the peak of my omnichannel experience.

But things rapidly went downhill from then on.

No one from the bank visited me on the said date and time. Several weeks have passed since then. I haven’t heard from the bank.

I tweeted a complaint but there’s radio silence from the bank’s side.

By now, I’ve given up on my application. Since credit card is a buyer’s market, I can easily get one from any number of other banks. So, the loss is not mine.

In my next post, I’ll describe my second omnichannel experience that was a fiasco from the word go. Watch this space.