The Importance of Customer Service in Banking Sector

Businesses are faced with a lot of challenges in the modern world. These challenges need a dynamic plan to conquer them. The banking sector is one of the industries that have a lot of stiff completion globally (Centre for Financial Training 2010 p.2). It means that for any bank to get or win the most significant market share, it has to operate smartly to outdo the competitors. Bank systems are known to be very sensitive when it comes to matters of customer service (Bessis 2014 p. 1). Most of the banks always work towards maintaining a good reputation and securing a more significant market share. Changes in customers taste and preferences have called for the introduction of more customized services that are offered in the banking institutions (Phillips 2013 p.1). It is essential for a financial institution or credit offering institutions to analyse the environment they are in so that they can realize their business needs.

 The existing system of car loan division is a very lengthy, complicated chain of steps and processes that need a more detailed business approach to deliver the best services to the existing customers as well attracting the prospective customers into their institution. Brissy bank should provide all the banking services that any customer may require at any time. Some of the services include the offering insurance covers such as life insurance covers, retrenchment covers, personal accident covers. Offering those extra services can only help the institution catch up with the pace of the leading banking institutions in the entire market. Another approach that can give excellent results regarding business performance is the integrated approach. Brissy bank can make it a policy that all the customers who acquire a loan to buy a car from the bank will sign an exclusive contract. They will be provided with a free car insurance cover in the initial stages after the purchase of the vehicle. Later, they’ll offer some subsidized premium rates to the owners to those cars immediately after the expiry of the provided free insurance cover.  The end users of the proposed business model will be both the existing customers of the Brissy bank an also the prospective customers. If the car loan system in the Brissy bank starts to operate smoothly, more new customers will join. The people who are employed will flock into the institution to apply for car loans as well as those people who have their businesses since they dominate the middle class in the society.

The Brissy bank should improve on the way it handles the customer’s documents during the loan application process. This can be enhanced by embracing the best modern technologies that exist for data storage. They can opt to outsource the data storage to some of the best cloud storage companies in the world for credibility and accountancy (Soliman 2015, p.11).  Another technology that can be employed is automating the process of loan application process. The process always consumes much of time since it is done manually. The automated loan application can be much more comfortable and waste less time. In the case study, the director of Brissy bank confesses that at times errors occur during the loan application process. Such failures might reduce by a significant impact if the automation is adopted. 

The methods that can be applied when eliciting the requirements include; filling out the provided physical forms as commanded by the bank system and the use of technology devices when they want to get customer information. Those forms may be structured in the form of questionnaires. Besides that, some interviews can be conducted to elicit the user's requirements. These interviews can be carried out on a one-on-one basis. The surveys can be administered to the users either directly or indirectly by the use of agents. On the part of the technology devices, the users can follow some voice prompts in their devices such as mobile phones as they give all the requirements that the system needed. The usage of smartphones and phone applications can be useful in collecting some required information for some users. The service of mobile banking has this origin. When the Brissy bank embraces all the involved methods, there will be no doubt that there will be an improvement in the services offered to its customers as well it will be in a position of attracting new customers and adding them into its customers' catalogue.

Use Case Modelling and Sequence Modelling A Case Of Car Loan Division In Brissy Bank

In Brissy bank, more understanding of the whole system in the car loan department is required. From the interview, there is a confession by the director that new staff in that bank found it more complicated and confusing to understand the system interaction. A lot of processes are involved, and each end user needs to know the state of interaction for efficiency in performance. With the help of the use case modelling and sequence modelling concept, all the actors will have a chance to have an overview of how the system functions. These two types of modelling can also give an opportunity for the introduction of automated production (Oracle 2007, p.6). The use case modelling and the sequence modelling are illustrated on the next two pages respectively.

Assumptions of the selected business models

New customers will have to activate their accounts before a loan application. After account activation, they will enjoy all the privileges that existing customers of the bank are entitled.

Description of the Selected Business Models

Once now the existing customers apply for a loan through filling the loan application form, they will have to submit those forms to the Brissy Banking office staff. Those forms will be checked whether they are correctly loaded. The validity of attached documents will be assessed. The loan processing will continue including doing all the proper filling of those documents for future use. Good record keeping is essential when such matters related to contracting and loan lending business. The office staff will also have to confirm the available performance records in the credit reference bureaus for efficiency purposes.

After all the verification and all the consultations with relevant credit related bodies, the Brissy banking staff will now decide on whether the customer should lend the applied amount of loan or not. This decision is wholly based on the parameters and instruments that were employed by the bank during the car loan processing duration performed by the office staff. If the loan application is approved, then the bank credit system will have an option of notifying the customer of their loan approval. They will also give an estimate of the time the customer should wait before the bank does the loan disbursement. Immediately the loan amount disbursement is done, the customer will also be notified of the step progress. All these notifications can be in the form of email inbox service or mobile phone messages service in the customer's phone number that they provided during the account opening or during the filling of loan application forms. The amount of car loan lender to the customer will be disbursed and deposited into the customer's account. On the other hand, if the customer fails to meet the minimum criteria that are required by the credit section of the Brissy bank to be offered a loan, then the customer will as well get notified. If another case arises whereby a customer's loan application is approved, but the amount is not disbursed into the customer's account even after the elapsing of the estimated time of disbursement, then the customer will have an option of going to seek assistance by consulting the customer care service in the Brissy bank.

References

Beckhart, Benjamin Haggott. Banking Systems. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. P.3-7.

Barisitz, Stephan. Banking in Central and Eastern Europe 1980-2006: A Comprehensive Analysis of Banking Sector Transformation in the Former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. London: Routledge, 2008. P.5-8

Bessis, Joel. Risk Management in Banking. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2014. Available at http://rbdigital.oneclickdigital.com. P.1

Center for Financial Training. Banking Systems. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2010. p.2-3

Phillips, Ronnie J. US Credit and Payments, 1800-1935. Provident Loan Societies Vol. 2 Vol. 2. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013. P 1