BANKING TIPS: Customer-centric services needed

It has been argued that when customers encounter a poor customer service, the majority of them will not complain but rather will simply take their business somewhere else. Customer service is very critical for the survival of the organization and one that cannot be ignored.

That is why I have written several times about the subject. A few weeks ago, I shared the importance of offering excellent customer service; it builds awareness and trust, improves customer retention, improves employee turnover, and improves brand image.

And last week, I shared three impacts of poor customer service; it damages the brand’s reputation, it kills potential sales deals, and it causes your top performers to leave your organization.

It is for the best interest of your organization to offer customer-centric services otherwise you can’t compete effectively. So, how can your organization ensure it offers customer-centric service? This week I will share some of the steps your bank can take to ensure it offers customer-centric services:

Educate and train your employees

Customer service is a very important tool to recruit and retain your customers. Make sure your employees are trained to ensure they have the knowledge, skills, and ability to make each interaction with the customer memorable by providing a convenient and positive experience which is above the customer’s expectations. In addition, you need to educate your employees on what impact customer service has on your bottom line (profits/loss line) and the role they need to play to ensure the positive impact.

Advocate simplicity

Customers want to deal with banks that value their business by fulfilling their demands faster and efficiently. Internal policies and procedures are designed to protect the bank’s interests but they can make it difficult for the customers to do business with you. Therefore, evaluate your process flows, systems, policies, and procedures from the customer’s point of view and make the necessary changes if needed to ensure customers’ requests are processed simpler, faster and accurately.

Promote customer service all around

Customer service should not be seen as a sole responsibility of customer-contact staff (i.e. tellers, salespersons, and relationship managers). Create a culture that everyone in your organization has a role to contribute to the success of each customer experience because it has been proved that the main reason for most customer service failure is due to a breakdown in an effective partnership between different teams in an organization. Hence train and educate your staff to understand how their work impacts the customer service experience and how they can contribute to the positive outcome of every customer interaction.

Encourage feedback from your customers

As I stated earlier, most customers will not complain when they encounter a poor customer service but will do so only if they feel like their feedback will be acted upon. This can only happen if you make listening to the voice of your customers as part of your staff’s daily responsibility. This can be done by training the staff in how to encourage feedback from the customers and use the information to make necessary changes which will have a positive impact on customer experience.

Customer- focused leaders

Most service initiatives fail because the leaders of the organization are not customer-focused. Traditional and usual ways of management need to be replaced with new styles that promote customer-focused service to ensure all leaders in your organization receive the required training in customer-focused leadership to implement the same in all levels of the organization.

In summary, for achieving excellence in customer service, banks need to clearly understand the needs of their customers and expectations.

Mr Kelvin Mkwawa is a seasoned banker