CRDB Bank Customer Service Week: Irritating banking issues

Tanzania’s CRDB Bank PLC marked its Customer Service Week in the second week of October 2014. Among other things, and contrary to what is normal, the week was marked by some CRDB managers manning front line desks.

These ‘best generals’ were to be strategically positioned in the front desks so as, inter alia, to have the much needed, but rarely offered first encounter with normal bank clients.

In this manner and if correctly done, the managers should have received some first hand and direct information, issues, concerns and songs of praises from the bank’s clients.

The unmatched innovation from CRDB, a bank with customers growing from just 100,000 in its humble beginning to a whole 2,000,000 some 18 years later in 2014, needs to be emulated. With over 40 banks in Tanzania, one comes across a number of irritating issues in some of these banks.

Taking the CRDB Bank Customer Service Week as an opportunity and a rare platform, the author of this article outlines some issues that are irritating some customers in some banks – without naming names. The issues are based on the author’s experiential knowledge with a number of banks in Tanzania.

ATM issues

Any customer who has used Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) is likely to have been irritated with a number of ATM issues.

These issues that are of great inconvenience to customers thereby, constituting menus of bad customer service include situations having a number of installed ATMs that are not operating.

These are ATMs that are not in service and times with comfort words of “temporarily closed”. Since temporality is a subjective matter, it may take anything from a couple of minutes to days.

Other irritating issues around ATMs are situations of dry ATMs. While ATMs are supposed to make liquidity available to clients 24 hours seven days a week, dry ATMs constitute great irritation and inconvenience to cash-hungry customers.

Also observed here and there are dirty and bad smelling as well as extra hot ATMs without air conditioning.

Surveys would also find customers being irritated with security guards, who stay inside the ATMs, while customers are conducting their transactions. One easily misses the much needed privacy and sense of security especially in these ages of cyber crime.

ATMs that are not operating as well as dry as opposed to liquid ATMs are nothing, but sleeping giant banking infrastructure. Economically, they show inefficient utilisation of installed infrastructure as they constitute fixed costs.

They represent missed opportunities for banks in terms of customer dissatisfaction. A close analysis of these sleeping giants may even find out that they contribute in reduced profitability.

Idle counters

As if ATMs irritation issues were not enough, some customers are likely to have been irritated inside banking halls too. Among the irritating issues in banking halls include the presence of many, but at time idle and unattended counters even in peak hours and days.

Related to this is a situation of having extra slow personnel either unwilling or unable to process transactions at ‘reasonable’ speed. Time-conscious customers will always be irritated and it may be a tall order to retain them in a very competitive banking industry.

Queuing

Until recently it has been more of a norm than exception for customers – old or young, sick of otherwise – to wait for their turn to be served while standing in queues.

CRDB Bank deserves words of appreciation for installing seats at least at some branches such as Mlimani City and Iringa branches. This is a practical application of a queuing theory in operation management.

Network issues

As is the case for some telecommunications companies, instances of some banks having network issues and, therefore, being ‘off network’ are not unheard of.

These network issues do irritate affected customers. This is because they have many and far-reaching implications in effecting transactions.

This in turn has many and far-reaching implications for victims, including delated transactions and all that follow such happenings. It is understood that network issues may be issues between the bank concerned and its network solutions provider.

However, a client sees and blames – and correctly so – the banks. Banks network issues with their network service providers should not cause inconvenience to customers.

A way forward

What has been outlined here should be taken seriously by all banks not only the ‘bank that listens’. It is one of those free lunches that a consultant can offer to banks.

What is more important, however, is for each of the many banks to take serious self criticism and see where and how it stands in these and many other banking issues that may be irritating their customers.

If a bank does not fix these and other irritating issues that are broken, its many competitors will be doing it. Let the management or even boards of directors ensure that the issues of irritation however small they may look, are fixed once and for all sooner than later.

Other banks and firms should emulate CRDB Bank if not by having a similar Customer Service Week, then implement the bank’s client services charter if there is none. If not, they should develop a good one and implement it.