Standard Bank South Africa wins service awards

[Standard Bank Team]

Striving for service excellence is nothing new for Standard Bank and its staff; we’ve been working hard to improve all levels of service within our different departments for a number of years now. The branches, call centres, business and private banking centres have been the main focus of this initiative and our hard work has paid off. 2010 saw Standard Bank South Africa walking away with the Orange Index award for financial services for the second year in a row; we also secured an overall third position in service delivery.

The Orange Index Awards is an independent survey of customer service in South Africa. The findings of this survey is also tallied with Standard Bank’s own service surveys, which contacts 6 000 customers each month at all touch points.

So what have we done differently?
We have thousands of staff members who believe that delivering great service is a top priority when it comes to their list of duties; and it’s because of this we have seen a consistent increase in the level of customer satisfaction over the last three years.

Knowing that good service is fundamental in business is easy to say; but we’re making it a reality by coupling it with open communication, guidance and a positive attitude. Our customers interact with us everyday through a number of channels and we take this opportunity to perfect and continuously work hard at becoming and remaining a customer centric organisation.

We have also put a number of elements in place to continue improving our service and communications; these include a television programme dedicated to customer service that airs once a month to employees in customer facing channels. The television show also features live recreations of incidents of good and bad service as experienced by “mystery shoppers”. Personalised emails called “Conversations with Lincoln” are also sent to all staff discussing matters relating to service. Individual branches and divisions also hold “Connect Sessions”, in which they discuss what they are doing to enhance customer service.

We have also commissioned an external company who assess our customer service. They have formulated a set of questions around our attitude, knowledge and responsiveness, and they provide regular feedback from our customers. Empathy has become the biggest characteristic against which service is measured.

When it comes to these measurements and results, we’re looking for scores of no less than 9 out of 10. We celebrate and reward the teams that excel and assist those who have fallen slightly and need some guidance. This way everyone wins and we can continue to serve Standard Bank’s customers.