For those that have taken their time to read my first blog, I thank you as well as the comments that I have received. As promised, the second article will focus on the financial sector in Nigerian Business environment.
To so many, the question is why is the focus on the Financial Sector - the simple truth is this - recently, the burst in this sector can only mean that Nigeria is not longer going to be considered in the near future - say ten (10) years from now - an oil strong dependant nation rather, people will see that the service sector of the economy is growing and can stand to compete in a global environment. Currently, we see these banks spreading their tentacles to other industries like telecommunication, oil, and agriculture, as such the power that most of these bank behemoth carry is great and can as well modify as well as reshape the banking climate in the country and region.
Thus it is imperative for them to work within that guidelines that will help in the future as well as now. Generally, financial institutions like banks amongst many other things are measured in three key areas: Assets, Customer Service Management, and Employee Morale (Work Compensation and Benefits). Well, the former has become the predominant agenda for most, I fear that they have ignored other aspects of their visions and objectives. Ignoring these areas could be detrimental, but maybe the key reason why they have ignored such is because most of our citizens that call on their patronage is not well informed about what can be acquired elsewhere. As such I decided to conduct my own (a non-paid) survey.
Yes, you heard me right. I survey. I decided to compare performances of banks in the area of customer service management in two states (Abuja and Lagos "Apapa specifically") and what I found is greatly disturbing, though not all the associates in these banks failed the test, thus it tells me that the financial sector needs to do a lot of over-hauling of its staff in order to compete in the coming age.
When I inquired about a product from same bank in five (5) different branches I was given different answers. Actually some staff were so arrogant to other customers that I felt like walking towards them and calm the situation, while some associates were seating receiving phone calls, doing some stuff on the net ignoring the long standing customers and their complains. Some of my inquest were shifted to the manager and only for the manager not to be well informed about it as well. Thus, it boggles me to only to realize that competition is strong in the banking sector as such the issue of God-father syndrome has as well moved in the financial sector thus the right persons might not necessarily be the ones occupying the management posts - if bank manager is not informed about some banking product or does not know the right person to contact - wow!!!!!! we are in trouble.
As part of the survey, I gathered that banks have instituted what they tag as "mistery shoppers" to grade the performance of the internal customers, yet, only to find out that most banks do not pay attention to such - rather building and enlarging their purse is what most consider in doing. Again, behemoths fall and when they do, people externally as well as internally fall. Banks in foreign countries that has ignored the retention of customers have come to suffer the pain, would your organization continually ignore this simple warning?
Interested in what can be done to improve, you can contact me via my e-mail. Thanks for the reading. My next article will be a continuation of this - focusing on training of associates and charges.
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