1)What are the real problems that the customers is highlighting?

The customer was disappointed because the bank bounced the cheque given by the
client to the plumber and charged him $50 for the penalty. It seems the bank didn’t
appreciate their client’s loyalty for eight years depositing his money into the bank for
paying mortgage and loan repayment. The situation become worse when the client’s
call was responded by virtual customer service which make him uncomfortable and
dissatisfied with the service provided to him.

2)Why are the big banks, despite their massive annual profits, seen by most
customers as giving poor services. Discuss three reasons.

The reason of the poor service because the main objective of the bank is to make
profit, therefore bank will minimise the cost as possible and focus on the possibility of
creating higher revenue, which is why the bank are not worried if their low financial
customer turned away as they will not influencing the large percentage of revenue.
For example, bank is more focusing on the clients that brings the most profits to them
such as government, investors and venture companies, their services and interest rate
can be negotiable even below the par because they have the huge volume of workers
in their company that will also subscribe the bank’s product and services which huge
percentage of revenue. The bank is willing to play with the risk because their client
have good financial strength and ready to invest or collaborate with the bank. These
are not applied to the retail customer, they came from different background and have
the possibility of unstable financial strength. The bank, in order to mitigate the risk,
the bank have set various requirement which sometime find it difficult to deal with the
bank.

The bank, in order to minimise cost, they summarize all the common problems and
solutions into the virtual customer service and ‘FAQ’ section to assist all their
customers, which sometimes it didn’t help the customer that face specific difficulties
especially in Islamic financing. The staff also fail to explain the banking product to
the customer effectively, therefore, many misunderstandings occur and led to
termination of service from the customer.

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The customer also afraid of the fraud activity in the management and from the third
party and disappointed on prevention action by the bank that unable to put the issue to
a stop. The bank only put the risk of customer turn away as the last resort because
some of the facilities needed by the customers are only provided in the specific bank,
therefore, the customers have no choice but to use their services.

3)Despite of the poor service provided by banks, why, often, can these customers
not be bothered to change banks? Discuss three reasons.

The reasons of why the customers refuse to turn for another bank are because, as
mentioned above, some of the facilities needed by the customers are only provided in
the specific bank, therefore, the customers have no choice but to use their services.
The customer needs to consider of the bank’s transaction tools as some bank already
have instant transfer, which we won’t have to wait the money transferred arrive to
beneficiary. If the selected bank still using old transaction tool, it might will give
disadvantages to the customer. The customer needs also to consider the availability of
bank branches and ATM machine, it is difficult for people that stay in rural area
which limited number bank that allocate their branch and machines at their area. The
customer will have to redo everything from scratch especially to those businessmen,
they will have to notify all of their customers of their new account to avoid mistake
transaction, they also need to write down all of the client’s bank account which
previously has been saved by the system when doing transaction using new account
which take time with large customer base. They also need to inform the company that
handle their insurance and other liability to change the account in their records for
future monthly payment. When conducting business internationally, they also need to
inform to their clients of the new SWIFT code. The bank probably offers the higher
return to its depositor and investor or the lower interest rate for the borrower
compared to the other bank, but generally all banks have almost the same figure of
rate. There’s a possibility that the bank might charge administrative fee for closing the
account, therefore, it’s not worth to reset everything to a new one while the benefit
and return are much smaller than the cost of time and effort. Poor services by previous
bank might give a bad perception of services from other bank as well, therefore,

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remain silent and stay could be better than all out for other banks which might give
the same result

4)If you are the manager of this banks, what will you do? Explain briefly three
actions that you will take to resolve this matter.

If I’m the manager of the bank, I will investigate the related transactions and the
factor of the cheque rebounded, then I will send the letter of apology and make an
appointment with the client to further explain the reason of the cheque rebounded and
recommend him with other services that can help him in further transaction to avoid
any more disruption. If the charges are mistakenly applied to him, the client’s account
will be credited based on the amount of the charges applied. I will also send the letter
of suggestion to the headquarters to established a team of human customer services to
assist the customers specifically in solving financing and investment issue. I must
briefly explain to the client that we cannot fulfil his request regarding the customer
services, but we will assure to improvise our virtual customer service and FAQ to
further solve specific issues.

5) How can the banks increase the quality of service they offer and increase
customer satisfaction? Discuss three methods.

In my opinion, I believed that there is no complain when there is no mistake, and that
is where the bank needed to be aware. The bank must always ensure their operation
run smoothly, because it represents their true performance and lead to the customers’
major satisfaction. For example, the bank should monitor the system for error and
evaluate the product offered to the customers whether it really contribute to their
favour. The bank also must aware of the changes in doing business from time to time,
so that they can provide better services efficiently. Reduce the customers waiting time
by having respected financial officer at the counter so the processing time will be
shortened. Offer the product training and support to the customer who eventually
might be new to the product, so they can understand the product better and make a
good decision in further transaction. The staff need to be mentally trained so they can
handle the various situation and difficult customers, they also need to have a sense of

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responsibility and ownerships towards customers problem and take a time to help and
assist them rather passing over the problem. The staff also must well verse with the
product offered by the bank, so they can deliver the information smoothly and reduce
any misunderstanding. Apart from that, the management must ensure that the
employee are happy with their work environment because it can encourage a better
service and performance to the customer, a set of event or reward for them as a token
of appreciation can reduce their stress at workplace and increase their self-
appreciation. A manager must conduct daily meeting before starting work to pass any
information from the management or discussing several issues to be taken into action
on that day. A suitable training program as a bank culture is recommended and
suitable for every new employee and promoted employee so they can adapt with their
jobs cope faster and demonstrate consistent performance in their work.

Obtaining the feedback from the customer will further reflect the best customer-
friendly system that customer wished and we will find the area of weakness of our
product that we can overcome. Therefore, bank need to create a platform for customer
to express their satisfaction. For example, bank can conduct online survey through
google form or create polling form at the social media, establish the service
community to obtain the feedback regarding existing product, it can also use to
generate ideas from the customers for a new and better product in future or getting the
feedback from the customer of the prelaunch product.

The bank must realize that not all problems have the same solution, therefore, bank
must update their FAQ and their virtual customer services so the customer won’t have
any issue to refer it. The bank needs to create various channel, either through social
media such as Pinterest and Instagram depend on their customer based, mobile apps,
email newsletter etc so the customer are well informed of any changes on information
or any event conducted by the bank. Timely contact the customer regarding their
transaction can minimize any conflict or misunderstanding between customers and
bank.

The voice of the customer is important for the bank to improve. Therefore, it is
recommended to give token of appreciation for the customer once a year for their
voice and feedback of using our product and services so that they will feel appreciated
and increase the customer loyalty. Sometimes, the customer always preferred to

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express their satisfaction in their private social media, therefore, the bank need to
build a friendly, non-formal approach either in social media or other medium and
always reply to their feedback so that they are more confidence to express their
satisfaction to the bank. The bank also can ask them how they would like to be
responded so that the bank can understand the true behaviour of the customer and
strengthen the relationship. Set a benchmark to the customer service so that they can
improve their performance on providing support and overcome particular areas that
are lacking.

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REFERENCES

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Dukes, A. and Zhu, Y., 2020. Why Is Customer Service So Bad? Because It’S
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Sherman, J., 2018. How To Improve Customer Service In The Banking Industry.

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Sullivan, A., 2020. Poor Service And Security Issues Driving Consumers To Switch
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