Title: Bank's Put Employees in Customers' Shoes; to Ensure That Employees Roll out a Red Carpet Every Time a Customer Walks in, Training Programs Work at Building Empathy with the Customer
Abstract: Customers are likely to feel welcome at a branch of State Bank of Tulsa-they're often greeted with a hug. We have a lot of older customers at that office, explains Training Director Susan Sykes. And while the bank's customer contact people are generally encouraged to greet customers with a handshake, many customers have arthritis or just prefer hugs. State Bank is one of many banks that tries to distinguish itself from the competition with a high level of service. Proof of its success is that during the eight months that this former savings bank was run by the Resolution Trust Corp., customer and account retention remained high, even though the RTC lowered deposit rates so that they were no longer competitive. Can teach people to be nice? you can't train someone to have a good attitude, says Arthur Bassin, chief service quality officer, Dime Savings Bank, New York. have to hire people who like people and reinforce their skills. Bassin feels strongly that customer service training helps achieve a consistent level of service. Dime employees are in the classroom learning service skills about 5% of the time, in other words one day a month. right number is probably 10%, he says. This may sound expensive, but it's more expensive not to do this, he says. alternative is that don't service the customer properly the first time and have to keep trying to fix it. It may be five times more expensive to make mistakes and do it over, and have customers defect, than to train the person to do it right thefirst time. Dime takes a three-part approach to customer service training, according to Bassin. First is to drill employees in products, services, procedures, and policies. can be a Harvard graduate but if you're winging it the customer won't be impressed, he says. Second is to reinforce such skills as listening, making eye contact, and rephrasing what the customer wants. The third step is ongoing training at least once a month. learn things over time that make want to do things differently, so bring People together to redefine the right way to do it, Bassin says. Overcoming the workload. One universal obstacle to good service is that customer contact people are often overwhelmed with customers and tasks that need to be handled immediately. Quality service is nothing more than common courtesy, but when get busy that's the first thing You forget, says Cyndy Johnston, marketing and personnel officer at Friendly Bank of Oklahoma City. (The bank is under some pressure to live up to its name--the customers are pretty quick to tell us when we don't, and it has been running quality service training for 25 years.) What the bank tries to achieve through its training, which now consists mainly of a set of videotapes and workbooks from Stickler Learning, Clearwater, Fla., is consistency. Tellers, for example, know exactly What the bank considers good service: things like a prompt greeting, a smile, a pleasant comment, and use of the person's name. At the same time, Johnston says, We don't want them to get too chatty, because that can make people just as angry aS Someone who's curt. When the bank started service training 25 years ago, its first problem was resistance from the loan officers. They had the philosophy that they were in an authoritative position, says Johnston, and therefore didn't need to worry about service quality. They eventually came around. Service department. The problem of being too busy to care about the customer has been resolved at Bay Bank through a division of labor. The Panama City, Fla., bank chose one part-time and four full-time employees who had demonstrated ability to serve customers wen and moved them to a customer service department. This department is located at the bank's main branch, where people come to give complaints in person. Customer queries by phone are also funneled to this department. …
Publication Year: 1992
Publication Date: 1992-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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