Project plan 2: 2pages

Table of Contents Project outline 2 Problem Identification 3 Project plan 4 Project Execution 4 Proposed Solution 6 Current and Future Technology Trends 7 References 8

Day by day the technology usage increases decade by decade there is rapid growth immensely. This radical shift will have the effect of changing the way we live, work and even think. World over, banks are experiencing the struggle of finding a technical answer to overcome the challenges of advanced change in requirements of work environment. The project discusses how customer service can negatively affect a corporate institution, in this paper I choose to analyze the challenges facing Equity Bank Limited as regards the customer service provisions. It is imperative to state that the challenges that accrue from computerization of their services are multi-pronged.

Banks are aware that customers’ needs new services and always make plans to have the services available. With the periodic increase of competence in IT field the customer’s needs to update new technologies to remain in competition. Equity bank has implemented the features to effectively address the radical changes that have arisen in the banking sector.

Customer satisfaction is a major problem that faces Information technology. Customer services has a very bad reputation when it comes to satisfaction of a client or customer’s needs, the bad reputation can be said to be a well-deserved challenge. Often, the work which is done incorrectly and not to the customers’ requirements, it therefore leaves the customer to determine what is good customer service and what is not. I recently needed a new hard drive to be installed on my computer and proceeded to ask that my personal files should be removed from the old drive and placed on the new drive, I received my computer back with a new drive and a very hefty service fee but all the critical files were missing. This turn of events took me aback and I was left wondering what type of computer repair shop was that could not accomplish my simple request.

Corporate IT faces similar challenges when it comes to its customer service. Some level of truth is evident in the statement that says, “A customer always needs to be told what they want.” This may not often be the case when the tone used by the computer expert comes out as an arrogant one. It is true to say that a customer may pass out as an ignorant person but this does not necessarily bring about the assumption that the customer is stupid, without being economical with the truth; this is hardly the case, as the customers also do not like to be treated as such. The challenge that is created by this case scenario is that can always be solved by improving customer care services by taking into keen consideration what the client needs and addressing them promptly.

An analogy of this case is applicable to the banking sector, take for instance a customer at equity bank limited needs to have his or her signature changed. The banks procedure is such that the client will be asked to append their signature on a piece of paper for a verification to be done by the attending customer care agent. If the customer care agent is not professional enough they will in-turn refer the client to the branch where they opened their account, by so doing it only means that the customer care agent does not have requisite training to handle the IT infrastructure at his disposal. The same procedure a client is being sent to do at his primary branch can be done by the agent and the feedback channeled to the clients primary bank branch for any verifications, if any.

Now that the problem has been identified, the whole idea of a project plan is to plan an intervention, the projects goal and the core benefits that accrue to solving the problem, the long-term benefits to the target audience also is discussed here in length

Key to any company is customer service. The bank in trying to incorporate features that customers are expecting is also aware that if they are not able to satisfy the customers that will spread through the social media which impacts the business very badly. To execute the project efficiently, it is imperative that the bank better understands the customer process management, a good review and a satisfied customer will acts as catalyst for company growth without the involvement of the company, I outline couple of practical, actionable steps that IT can adopt to execute its mandate.

a) Understanding the customers

Every customer needs a satisfied service that they will have with the bank and over any communication channel that they may choose to use. Empirical research shows that customer demographics affect channel preference, with the younger generation being much comfortable using communications such as chat.

b) Empowering customer service agents with good information

Customer service systems should not only incorporate the front end of a database of customer information and cases. The agents ought to be integrated with back office applications for easy retrieval of answers to questions in real-time, such questions can include when and what time an order was shipped. The customer history can be studied from decision strategy which happens only when a customer system is integrated with the IT. The banks IT department can deliver an integrated sales and customer service which can allow agents to quickly access and retrieve client sales data, orders and even discount levels.

c) Focusing on the agent experience

Agents and customer care personnel normally use approximately 20 different applications during their workday; they also typically do not follow the same discovery pattern leaving each agent with the choice to follow their own discovery path, the efficiency with which each agent offers services will greatly vary due to this fact, the services rendered will therefore be inconsistent. I suggest that one workable solution for the IT department is the application of the power of business process management to their customer service tools. IT can assist service managers to create repeatable business processes that use visual modelling tools geared to the business users. This strategy has been employed by an international bank when the managers realized that it was because of their poor customer satisfaction scores that resulted to its service agents in its 23 contact centers following different operational processes. The adoption of process-driven agent desktop by agents at Equity bank will improve first contact resolution by at least 30%

There are wide ranges of interventions that have been put forward as possible solutions to the challenges that emanate from the IT sector in the banking industry, for the customers of Equity some of the solutions I would recommend are:

a) Adoptation of a self-Inquiry facility:

This facility can be used for logging into specified self-inquiry terminals at the branch to inquire and view the transactions in the account.

b) Remote banking:

Remote terminals located at the customer site connected to the respective branch through modems that can allow the customer to make any Inquiries regarding their accounts, it can be done online without necessarily having to move from where an account holder is located.

c) Anytime banking:

Can also be referred to as anywhere banking, Installation of ATM’s that offer non-stop cash withdrawal, deposits and inquiry facilities. Networking of computerized branches within the city and intra-city, these services in effect will allow for the customers of the Banks branches, when interconnected, to easily transacting from any of the branches.

d) Electronic banking

It is a feature that enables the bank to provide corporate or high value customers with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) software on a personal computer, to make inquiries into their financial transactions and accounts, cash transfers, their chequebook issues and make inquiries on rates without having to visit the banks. The Electronic Data Interchange, which is the technology used to provide this service could be used to transmit business transactions in computer-readable form between organizations and individuals in standard format.

a) Year of conversational commerce

Current trends of communication indicate that most of the communication still takes place via email and phone; some of the customer-centric companies however use live chat for website support. Before the end of 2016, it will be normal for customers and consumers to be chatting with businesses over Facebook messenger and WhatsApp, as it currently stands, it is still the dominant mode of communication because messaging benefits both businesses and customers alike.

b) Intelligent self-service options

The future of customer service is such that by the year 2020 customers and clients will be able to manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without having to interact with humans; self-service will have gained pace to become substantial part of the trend. A Forrester Research found that self-service pages outperform phone agents in user preference (Sven, 2016).

References

· (n.d). Information Technology Industry Problem Solving. Retrieved from: http://www.kepner-tregoe.com/problem-solving/industries/information- technology/

Ghaziri, H. (1998). Information Technology in the banking sector: Opportunities, threats and strategies. Retrieved from: http://ddc.aub.edu.lb/projects/business/it-banking.html

Sven. (2016). 7 Realistic Customer Service Trends for 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.userlike.com/en/blog/customer-service-trends-2016