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Banking services in need of improvement

By Zhang Jiawei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-10-23 14:09

A new report about the customer services provided by China's banks points out several areas for improvement.

The Customer Service Committee of CATIS (CNCSC), a newly established organization aiming to promote the service level of enterprises within China, released the country's banking industry's September and October services data in Beijing on Oct 22.

The first report of its kind in the country, it included data on 16 Chinese banks. CNCSC conducted 100 calls to each bank's customer service call center anonymously, according to Su Jun, deputy director of CNCSC, who was making the release. Su did not disclose any of the banks' names.

The survey showed the most outstanding problem of Chinese banks' customer services was the difficulty for a client's call to reach a customer service representative.

Data collected by the CNCSC showed only half of the 16 banks' customer service call centers' call completion rate within 20 seconds were above the industry's average level. And only four of them can get 80 percent of their clients' call through within 20 seconds.

Furthermore, after the call does go through, 16.73 percent of banks' clients had to waste an average of 47.39 seconds waiting for the person on the other side of the phone to find out a solution to their problem.

Confusing automatic voice transfer systems were also a problem. The CNCSC elaborated on this by taking loss registration as an example, saying only 25 percent of the tested customer service call centers had placed the "loss registration" choice on the starters menu, 37.5 percent on the secondary menu, 12.5 percent required the clients to dial more than three times and 25 percent even don’t provide an independent loss registration choice.

CNCSC said two of the 16 banks had advertisements in their service hotlines, which not only wasted the clients' time but also increased the calling time and therefore their phone bills.

Half of the 16 banks' service staff's attitude had reached the banking industry's average level, CNCSC said, adding that half of the service staff was not polite enough.

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Whether the service staff can give a correct answer was another problem. CNCSC said in the banking industry averagely 77.16 percent of service staff can give the right answers, and only 7 of the 16 tested banks had reached the level.

Su said the role of banks' customer service call centers are shifting from the traditional service centers to the telephone banking service centers and the need for improving each bank's service capability is urgent.

The CNCSC was established on July 15 this year with the aim of promoting the service level in China. Its staff consists of former government officials from the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, former executives from China Unicom and China Merchants Bank and many other people from other departments and big companies.