Dear All, The foremost aspect to be addressed is that the personal or any loan's foreclosure terms and conditions must be communicated very clearly in writing to all prospective customer/s and customers acceptance on the same must be obtained by the bank as a matter of record.
Secondly,above info must also be communicated to the centralised customer service centre to enable harmonius information relay to an existing or prospective customer.
The above would solve the matter to a great extent.
Thirdly,the bank must establish a separate cell to facilitate closure and they should lay down and follow timelines for return of documents etc on foreclosure or at the end of tenure.This is necesary as ending a loan relationship smoothly is as important as creating one.This would also ensure positive references by word of mouth from an old consumer and healthy probability of repeat business.
Bank should make a standard procedure and rules regarding load disbursement, interest charges, pre-closer procedure and charges. This document to be signed by bank and customer before approval of loan and a copy to kept with bank for future reference. One copy of same documents should be handed over to customer.
2) Training to the employee:
Bank must train all the employee regarding all rules related to loan or any call from customer at service center must be diverted to person who has been trained for particular issues. Training of staff will ensure that customer will get same feed back when they call customer service center
The records to be properly updated when the account is being moved at every action and especially when account is moving between branches. Coming to the Service Guarantee issue, the necessary action has to be taken when an Auto Debit for the EMI
I agree that there can be a lot of incumbencies in the levels of service's in large organisations like this, but still its really vuage in this case, as it has already been communicated to the highest level of the org. The problem here is with the Trainig to the lower levels (Call Center exe, Sales reps & cust exe)where the information provided to the customers need to be clear and need to be accountable through some quality control(record calls @ call center, proper paperwork, with published guidelines). its also very clear even at the TOP level Exe's dont have the right info and can make decision as req by the situation and aswell they have to be made accountable for the their and answerable aswell the communication to the lower hirearchy has to be clear (here the cust was ready make the payment @2% foreclosure charges but what was the reason for accepting for 0%). Another aspect is cust record could have been made centralised and record the imp aspects or notes which could have been made available to all the authorised persons so that everyone knows whts happening with a particular account and whos was last dealing with the account.The IT Solutions needs to be Utilised in FULL
Steps to be taken to overcome such problems. 1. Prepare a checklist of what the bank has taken from the customer while giving the loan. So that it becomes easy while returning any particulars or when the loan has been cancelled to the customer. 2. Have only one point of contact to solve the issues, and mention that the loan closure will take atleast a week, so that all the paper works are finished by that time. 3. Every coversation within the bank should be made via email keeping concerned persons in mailing loop. With the update to the customer. 4. The Customer care dept. should only direct to the concerned person rather than suggesting or giving solution(False or True). 5. The customer should be given all the necessary statement levying foreclosure charges with a written document or bond signed by the senior manager.
first of all the official as to be trained .how to reponse to a customer and all the customer care executive whould be trained in banking rules .i will say one thing to customer read the offer documents before taking a step.
As I read the case study, there are three broader issues that needs to be addressed. 1. No systematic & centralized tracking of customer issues and systematic escalation of the same through the escalation channels within the bank. All customer issues should be attached to their account details and should be visible from any branch and all the history of the issue should be accessible to customer facing roles within the bank 2. Apparently the bank's policy document is not laid out clearly and in detail (And available with all bank employees concerned) causing various customer interfacing bankers to provide their own interpretation of bank's policy. Automation & Centralized storing of customer data would help addressing a lot of these issues. 3. The fact that the commitments made/SLA promised to the client by the bank is missed time and again calls for a functional role to track the customer commitments/SLA's as the bank's reputation is at stake there
As Gandhiji said, Customer is the most important person. He is not dependent on us but we (bankers) are dependent on him. This is forgotten by almost everyone today. Today's strategy is Business and only business. Targets, incentives, performance at any cost. The target should be customer's satisfaction, incentives should be based on zero customer complaints and performance should be marked by the happy customer family. Every banker is offering near about same terms and conditions. The terms should be cleary printed and not ambigious as "prescribed from time to time". Rather terms should be mentioned as "charges Rs. or % w.e.f." Any amendments should be clearly jotted down. If cost is the matter, the charges should be published in newspapers and individual customers can be emailed. Computerised statements should contain name,designation and branch of the person generating it. This will curb the practice of giving misleading informations/details.
