Basic research. Berezovskaya V.D. Quality of banking service: a modern view Evaluation of the quality of service in a bank

Nesterov A.K. Banking services for individuals // Encyclopedia of the Nesterovs

The intensive integration of banking services for individuals into the national financial and credit system has led to the qualitative development of the services provided. At the same time, the demand for banking services has increased among the population.

The concept and essence of banking services for individuals

– a range of financial, credit and service operations related to the provision of services to private clients of the bank in the framework of their financial interests.

Banking operations related to servicing individuals include 4 categories:

1. Service - these are all operations in which there are only two participants: an individual and a bank. This includes deposit operations, settlement operations, etc.
2. Corporate and retail - servicing by the bank of transactions between individuals and companies, while the bank acts as an intermediary in such transactions. For example, payment for utilities, goods, etc.
3. Technological - provision of advanced services, including systems

Roman Isaev

Organizational development and process management expert

Partner of the State Corporation "Modern Management Technologies"

Head of organizational and corporate development projects

Professional business coach and Business Studio specialist

The article presents a clear approach to establishing a connection between the main components of the quality of banking activities from the point of view of the client. For each component, a detailed description, examples from practice, links to the necessary methods and solutions are provided. The following concepts are considered: quality management system and relevant standards; customer service, banking service quality standard; process, quality standard of the banking process; product, banking product quality standard.

Says an experienced banking client who has served in more than 15 different banks:

"If a:

• There are long queues at the bank's offices, and transactions take a long time;
• Bank offices are uncomfortable, there are no leaflets and leaflets with a detailed description of the bank's products and services, there is no self-service area;
• There is a high frequency of errors by employees or technical devices of the bank;
• Bank employees cannot provide high-quality advice (answer all my specialized questions);
• It is not possible to open a deposit or make the most common and necessary payments without a commission in the "Internet Bank" system;
• The cost of bank services is equal to or higher than the average market;
• The bank does not have modern services that can satisfy all my needs;
• There is no good feedback between the client and the bank, careful work with claims and tracking customer satisfaction;

then I avoid such a bank.

The article considers the quality of banking activities from the point of view of the client. Since quality (in simple terms) is the degree to which an object meets the requirements of its stakeholders, there are many types of quality depending on the number of stakeholders. For example, the quality of bank liquidity management, the quality of bank risk management, the quality of a bank as an employer, the quality of a bank as an object of regulation by government agencies, etc.

We are interested in all aspects of the bank's activities that affect customer satisfaction. There are many developments on this topic, but the author has not yet seen a description of a systematic approach to ensuring and improving the quality of a bank, which would link various concepts and methods into a system, explain their relationship. As a result, much comes down to the following concepts and components, which will be discussed in detail below.

The concept of "quality management system" (QMS), according to the author, is fundamental and includes three components: service, process, product (Scheme 1).

Scheme 1. Basic concepts/components of bank quality (for the client)

Each of these three components can be used by the bank as a separate and independent way to improve the quality of banking activities and customer satisfaction, and as part of a single QMS. Depending on what is more important for the bank and what it sees as its strategy and competitive advantage, the most attention may be paid to one of the methods.

Service quality standard establishes how to organize interaction with the client and provide him with comfortable conditions in the bank office.

Business process quality standard determines how the business process should be arranged and how to execute it; who and what functions should perform in the business process; who should be responsible for what; what inputs/outputs should be formed and with what requirements.

Product quality standard establishes how to make the cost and conditions for the sale of the product competitive and beneficial for the client.

Standard for QMS(e.g. ISO 9001) defines how to tie together all the components of banking quality, ensure the functioning of the system and document the system.

Which method to choose: one or all - the bank decides. The more methods involved, respectively, the greater the financial and labor costs of the bank, but the greater the satisfaction of customers, and hence the sales and profits of the bank.

Some banks rely on the quality of customer service and an individual approach to each client. Others, on the contrary, focus on the mass character of customer service, the development of stable and large-scale technologies and business processes. And, finally, some banks prefer to attract and retain customers with the quality of products in its narrow sense (ie, favorable rates, terms of contracts, etc.).

Of course, ideally, all methods should be implemented equally effectively and in a balanced way.

Example 1 Says a representative of the management of the bank, in which the emphasis is on the quality of service (for more details, see):

“It is not so important for our client whether he had to wait when visiting the operating office, or whether the operator girl did something wrong. Our customers are just pleased to come to the bank and here they get positive emotions. We even introduced such a concept as managing the mood and impressions of the client. We identified and implemented several aspects that positively affect the mood of the client and his impressions of visiting the bank:

1. Office decoration. Pleasant colors, paintings, flowers, an aquarium, etc.;
2. Interior comfort and office interior. The office must have upholstered furniture, tables with business magazines, a free coffee machine, a TV with business channels, technical devices for self-service;
3. Meeting each client with a bank employee (consultant / client manager) and accompanying him to obtain the necessary product / service;
4. And much more.

In addition, when visiting the bank, our clients regularly receive small but pleasant gifts (branded bank pens, calendars, flags, stickers with the bank's logo, etc.).”

Example 2 Says a representative of the bank's management, who chose the "Quality of business processes" method:

“We focus on mass servicing a large flow of customers, when well-established business processes and technologies are of paramount importance. For us, first of all, such parameters as time, cost and error-free performance of all operations in business processes are important. Despite the fact that we lose to some banks in an individual approach to clients, our clients are given the opportunity to perform any banking operation at the most technological level, quickly and without much difficulty.”

Example 3 Says a representative of the bank's management, in which attention is focused on the quality of products (in the financial and contractual part):

“Clients come to us, first of all, because we do not have commissions for the most common payments, one of the highest interest rates on deposits, favorable conditions for opening and maintaining bank accounts and debit cards. We may not have the most luxurious offices and there are often queues, but we help our clients save money, and they appreciate it.”

Let's consider the listed approaches to quality assurance in more detail.

Bank quality management system

Responsible for this direction in the bank: quality service, departments of business processes, methodology and standardization, organizational development.

QMS bank is a set of interrelated methodological, technical, informational, organizational and other means of quality management.

By implementing the QMS, we somehow describe the business processes of the bank, and then manage them. In other words, business processes and QMS cannot exist independently of each other if we are talking about a real QMS that works in practice and brings results. As noted earlier, the QMS is a universal tool that combines all methods, techniques, technologies and tools in the field of bank quality.

The methodological recommendations of the Association of Russian Banks (ARB) and Ch. 6 books. They detail the architecture of the bank's QMS, the processes and procedures for organizing the functioning of the QMS, the preparation of the QMS for certification for compliance with the requirements of ISO 9001:2008, the relationship between the QMS and the quality standards of banking activities of the ARB.

Recently, in many banks and projects, standard solutions are increasingly being used, for example, the Standard Quality Management System for a commercial bank. This is an electronic database that contains all the necessary sample documents, methods and materials for building, certifying and organizing the functioning of the QMS in the bank.

In order not to dive into the details of the methodological recommendations, the requirements of the ISO 9001:2008 standard and not to repeat the indicated sources of information, the author would like to talk about the QMS in the format “just about the complex”.

QMS in the bank: just about the complex

The QMS and the work of the process team* QMS is reduced to the allocation of the bank's business processes and their management according to certain rules/mechanisms, which include (for more details see):

• Regular discussion of all key issues, tasks and problems related to the bank's business processes and making the necessary decisions at meetings of the permanent committee on business processes and quality;
• Regular meetings of process teams, consisting of employees of various departments of the bank, on strategic planning, control, analysis and improvement of their process;
• Feedback system for managers and executors of the process / sub-processes;
• A single instruction for managing processes and the work of process teams (a sequence of steps when working with processes);
• Marketing mechanisms (mandatory determination of market requirements for the process and its competitive advantages, evaluation of customer satisfaction in the process);
• Strategic planning process;
• Description of the process, the interaction of departments and responsibilities within its framework, the definition of the boundaries of the process;
• Project (task) management to improve (optimize) the process, introduce innovations (ideas);
• A system for monitoring business process indicators;
• Dealing with customer complaints about the process and process analysis. Customer feedback process. ;
• Methods of analysis / audit and continuous improvement (optimization) of the process;
• Preventive actions and management of operational risks of the process;
• Documentation of all work and results of process management (records management);
• Process budgeting and provision of resources;
• Motivation of process participants depending on the results of the entire process, and not its separate sub-process.

The functions of the process team/quality service of the bank are as follows:

• Development of the listed rules based on well-known standards (ISO, ARB, etc.);
• Fixing these rules in the form of regulatory documents (regulations, instructions, memos) and forms of documents of the bank;
• Implementation of these rules in the work of the bank's process teams (including training and consulting of process teams);
• Monitoring compliance with the rules and active participation in their implementation;
• Implementation (or coordination) of the procedure for the functioning of the QMS (planning, documentation, audits, management review, etc.).

The default situation that exists in some banks that do not have QMS and process commands:

• Rules and mechanisms for managing business processes are not used or are not fully used;
• A large number of issues, tasks and problems are solved within structural units without active interaction within the processes;
• There is no clear delineation of responsibility in the process and for the end-to-end process as a whole;
• Mainly only financial indicators of processes are measured and controlled. There are no other types of indicators;
• Resources are spent more on solving serious problems in processes than on preventing them.

Bank service quality

Responsible for this area in the bank: quality service, customer service departments, marketing.

We are all clients of banks and use their services with a certain frequency. And we all want queues in transaction halls to be shorter, bank specialists / tellers to be polite and give detailed advice, bank offices to be comfortable and have a convenient work schedule, and visiting the bank always leaves a good impression. All this allows you to implement and control the service quality management system, which is a subsystem of the QMS.

Quality of service(within this article) is a set of mechanisms, activities, rules and attributes that affect customer satisfaction when contacting the bank, but not directly related to the implementation of the main banking business processes (implementation of products and services). It is important to distinguish between activities to ensure and improve the quality of service in a bank from the implementation of the main (product) business processes of the bank. In other words, the main business processes are launched after the client is satisfied with the quality of service and he decides to purchase the necessary product / service.

For example, a client went into a bank office, he liked the interior of the office, the absence of a queue. Polite employees consulted him in detail, and then he decided to open a deposit in this bank, i.e., the first procedure “Payment of documents for opening a deposit” of the “Deposits” business process was launched.

Depending on the points of contact between the client and the bank, the quality of service is divided into several types: the quality of service at the bank office, the quality of the bank's Internet representative office, the quality of service at the call center (telephone center).

Consider the requirements for the quality of service in a bank office (Scheme 2), which the author combines into the following three groups (categories): external attributes, internal attributes and office personnel.

Each group consists of several subgroups of requirements, which, in turn, include specific highly specialized requirements. A complete list of all requirements for the quality of service in a bank in electronic form is presented in the Standard quality management system for a commercial bank.

When building a service quality management system in a bank, the bank's compliance with all requirements is first assessed. Then, for those requirements that are not met, a list of tasks and projects is developed and implemented to bring the bank in line with the requirements for quality of service.

It is necessary to conduct a regular audit of the quality of service in a bank, for example, using the Mystery Shopper method (≪mystery shopper≫, or ≪test purchase≫). Based on the results of each audit, the bank's service quality index is calculated as an average assessment of the satisfaction of all requirements.

Many banks operate or develop a regulatory document "Uniform standards of quality of service in the bank". It contains descriptions of the methods and rules adopted by the bank for the implementation of service quality requirements, as well as the structure and procedures of the service quality management system. An example document is provided in .

The quality of the bank's business processes

Responsible for this direction in the bank: departments of business processes, methodology and standardization, organizational development.

Buisness process(process) is a set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs.

The quality of business processes is achieved through their description and optimization using modern business modeling software products (for example, Business Studio), implementation and subsequent continuous use of business process management mechanisms.

All procedures (stages) for managing the bank's business processes are discussed in detail in, in general, the process is presented in Scheme 3.

Scheme 3. QMS process management

Description (standardization) of business processes allows:

• Create a reference way to perform each procedure that will lead to the best results;
• To increase the efficiency of interaction of all participants (bank divisions) in the process;
• Establish responsibility for both each procedure and the entire process (process owner);
• Maintain all knowledge of bank employees about processes for the purpose of training new employees and further improving processes;
• Establish requirements for the execution time of all process procedures, as well as other requirements and indicators (quality, efficiency, effectiveness);
• Assess and minimize operational risks;
• Create instructions for action in case of critical situations.

For any main bank process (related to the implementation, product/service life cycle), it is recommended to establish the following structure (chain of procedures):

• Registration (for example, registration and issuance of a new bank card to the client);
• Servicing (for example, servicing all transactions with a bank card through ATMs, blocking / unblocking a card, changing the parameters of the “SMS service” service on a card, etc.);
• Closing (for example, closing and destroying the map).

Quality must be maintained in all of these procedures, not just in clearance. The main requirements of customers for the quality of business processes:

• Speed ​​up the execution of procedures (for example, the passage of transfers and payments, consideration of an application for a loan, reduce the time for issuing a certificate of account balance for obtaining a visa, etc.);
• Simplify paperwork;
• Ensure the timeliness of the implementation of procedures (for example, to produce bank cards on time);
• Minimize errors in the execution of procedures (for example, incorrect calculation of interest on a loan or errors in paperwork);
• Minimize the client's trips to the bank's office (for example, provide for the possibility of delivering a bank card to the client at home, the departure of a bank consultant to the client's office, the ability to perform most banking operations remotely);
• Implement various options for performing procedures (for example, the possibility of repaying a loan through the Internet Bank system, ATMs of third-party banks, city payment terminals, post offices, etc.).

Assessment of the quality of business processes

To assess the quality, the following business processes of the bank must be selected:

• Key business processes (related to the sale of bank products and services), such as "Bank cards", "Settlement and cash services", "Lending", "Remote banking", etc.;
• Group of processes "Interaction with customers": work with customer complaints, work of the call center, research and analysis of customer satisfaction;
• Process groups "Marketing Management" (including the development of banking products and services), "Financial Management", "Risk Management", "Personnel Management", etc.

Evaluation of the quality of business processes can be carried out by at least two methods: by analyzing the indicators of business processes and customer surveys using questionnaires and checklists.

Examples of more than 500 typical indicators of banking business processes are given in. It is convenient to perform plan-fact analysis of indicators, for example, using the Business Studio software product.

Questions for clients may include:

• Were all documents for issuing a bank card issued without errors?
• Does the appearance of the card match the original layout? Is your last name spelled correctly?
• Are all bank card transactions performed without errors and delays?
• Have you had any problems with ATMs?
• Was the PIN envelope sealed?;
• Have there been cases of unauthorized use of your account/card?
• How long did it take from the moment you applied for a card to the time it was issued?
• Have there been cases of incorrect blocking of the card by the bank?

For each business process, an index of its quality is calculated (customer satisfaction with the quality of the business process), then an integrated (average) index of the quality of all business processes of the bank is calculated.

The quality of the bank's products (financial and contractual part)

Responsible for this direction in the bank: financial department, legal department.

By the quality of banking products/services, the author means:

• Financial part of the product (tariffs);
• Contractual part (terms of contracts);
• Characteristics of the bank's product line as a whole (i.e., the presence or absence of certain products / services and their availability, the ability to customize the parameters of each product according to the needs of the client).

We can say that business processes are the dynamic side of quality, products are the static side. In other words, to assess the requirements for products and their parameters, it is not necessary to monitor the execution of business processes, collect statistics of indicators and various observations. Everything is clearly recorded in the regulatory documents of the bank.

The main requirements of customers for the quality of products:

• Make the parameters of the product line more flexible (for example, provide the opportunity to choose a deposit according to individual requirements);
• Reduce the cost of products and services or establish benefits for loyal customers (for example, eliminate the commission for issuing a loan or reduce the interest rate for regular customers);
• Change certain terms of contracts (for example, for a consumer loan - this is the possibility of early repayment of the loan without paying a fine, the absence of guarantors, the absence of a down payment).

Product quality assessment

The assessment of the quality of products (in their financial and contractual part) is carried out by studying the regulatory documents for products / services (tariffs, contract forms, etc.) and developing special questionnaires, i.e. lists of questions that the client must answer.

Let's give some examples of questions.

• Have you been offered enough fares to choose from?
• Are bank card rates favorable for you compared to other banks?
• Are you completely satisfied with the cost parameters of the selected tariff?
• Are you satisfied with all the terms of the agreement on the issuance and maintenance of bank cards?
• Did you have to make a mandatory payment/commission that you did not know/were not informed about?
• Have rates and terms of the contract deteriorated over time?

For each product/service of the bank, its quality index is calculated (customer satisfaction with the quality of the product), then the integrated (average) quality index of all products/services of the bank is calculated.

Assessment of the quality of banking activities

Based on the three areas considered to ensure and improve the quality of banking activities and customer satisfaction, an integrated index of the quality of banking activities (general customer satisfaction) is calculated.

This index is equal to the arithmetic mean of the indices of the quality of service in a bank (customer satisfaction with the quality of service), the quality of the bank's business processes (customer satisfaction with the quality of business processes) and the quality of bank products (customer satisfaction with the quality of products).

Let us once again note that in the framework of this work, we evaluate the quality of banking activities primarily from the point of view of the client and do not take into account other "internal" aspects of the quality of the bank's work, such as the quality of banking risk management, the quality of financial management, the quality of strategic management, etc. d.

Conclusion

So, we have considered the main directions (methods) of ensuring and improving the quality of banking activities in terms of customer satisfaction. We emphasize that at present, individual local quality improvements are no longer enough. There is a need for a systematic approach that allows you to combine all areas, approaches, standards and developments into a system and thereby increase the transparency, manageability and efficiency of this activity by several times.

* A process team is a permanent working group that manages a process under the direction of its owner.

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Edward Novatorov Ph.D.

Experts, both in Russia and abroad, argue that in a fairly saturated market of banking services today, it is the quality of customer service that determines the success of competition. However, in the domestic specialized literature there are few recommendations on how, in practice, you can effectively and quickly measure the quality of your banking services. Most of the work on quality measurement is devoted to the quality problems of goods in the manufacturing sector.

The purpose of this article is an attempt to acquaint banking professionals with the popular foreign SERVQUAL methodology. The SERVQUAL methodology was developed as a universal tool for measuring quality in the service sector. However, recent studies suggest that the methodology can be adapted to each of the service industries and used, in particular, to measure the quality of banking services.

The concept of banking service quality

In order to measure the quality of a banking service, it is necessary to understand what constitutes the quality of service in a bank. A banking service as a commodity is an intangible, intangible act or performance of work that does not lead to ownership of anything tangible. As a rule, such actions or types of work occur at the moment of direct contact between the producer of the banking service and its consumer. For these reasons, according to experts, the quality of a banking service is related to the interactive process that takes place between the bank and the client.

The quality of a banking service essentially depends on the process by which the consumer compares his expectations of the quality of a banking service before its consumption with the direct perception of the quality of a banking service at the time and after its consumption. The perception of the quality of banking services by the consumer at the time of its consumption occurs in two main aspects: WHAT the consumer receives from the banking service (technical aspect of quality) and HOW the consumer receives the banking service (functional aspect of quality).

According to experts, the consumer's perception of the functional and technical aspects of the quality of banking services occurs on the basis of a kind of five-step ladder (Fig. 1).

Picture 1
The concept of the quality of banking services and criteria for its evaluation

The first step is the gap between the consumer's expectations regarding the quality of banking services and the reaction of the bank's management to these expectations. The second step is the gap between the understanding of the bank's management of the consumer's expectations and the process of implementing a quality system in their bank. The third step is the gap between the quality system implemented by the bank's management and the bank's staff being unprepared to follow the established standards. The fourth step is the gap between the existing quality system in the bank and the inflated advertising of this quality system in the media. Finally, the fifth, most important, step is the gap between the expectations of consumers of banking services and the process of providing this service by the bank.

Consumer expectations regarding quality are either confirmed or they are not. The latter leads to the withdrawal of consumers to competing banks and to higher marketing costs in the bank to attract new consumers to replace those who have left. Confirmation of expectations leads to long-term customer loyalty to the bank, sometimes referred to as "relationship marketing". Relationship marketing ensures a bank's long-term success through consistent profitability based on customer loyalty and by reducing marketing spend to attract new customers.

Banking service quality criteria

Studies have shown that consumers evaluate the functional and technical aspects of the quality of a banking service according to five main criteria (see Figure 1):

Methodology for measuring the quality of banking services

To measure the five criteria for the quality of a banking service, the adapted methodology "SERVQUAL" (an abbreviation for "service quality" or "quality of service") can be successfully used.

The essence of the simplest approach to the study of the quality of banking services consists of two parts (see Appendix). Consumers are first asked on a 5- to 7-point Likert scale (strongly disagree-strongly agree) to express their overall expectations regarding the five criteria of banking quality listed above. Then, using a similar scale, consumers are asked to express their specific perceptions of the same five criteria of service quality, but in a particular surveyed bank. The results of the survey are compared in order to calculate the five quality factors "Q":

1. Q - materiality;
2. Q - reliability;
3. Q - responsiveness;
4. Q - conviction;
5. Q - sympathy.

The five quality factors "Q" are a numerical expression of the state of quality. Each of the five quality factors "Q" is measured by 4-5 sub-criteria. Thus, the five quality criteria "Q" are divided into a total of 22 sub-criteria. These 22 sub-criteria are calculated by subtracting the 22 expected expectancy ratings from the 22 perceived perception ratings. They are then grouped into five quality factors "Q" using the method of averages. By the same principle, five quality factors "Q" are grouped into the global service quality factor in the surveyed bank using the method of average values ​​(Table 1).

The results of the quality study using the SERVQUAL methodology are interpreted as follows. The zero value of any of the quality coefficients means that the level of expectation of quality and the level of perception of quality according to this criterion or sub-criterion match. Negative values ​​indicate that the level of expectation exceeds the level of perception. Finally, positive values ​​indicate that the perception of quality is above expectations. Positive and zero values ​​of quality coefficients are considered as a successful result. A satisfactory result is considered to be negative quality factors that are as close as possible to zero. An unsatisfactory result is considered to be negative quality factors that deviate from zero.

Table 1 shows the results of one such study. According to the results of the study, it turned out that the lowest quality factor was obtained according to the criterion "responsiveness" (Q = -1.4). The highest quality factor was obtained according to the criterion of "materiality" (Q = -0.7). The global service quality index was -1.1 points, which can be described as a satisfactory result.

Table 1
The results of the study of the quality of banking services

Conclusion

In our opinion, the above SERVQUAL methodology has significant potential for measuring the quality of banking services. The reader's attention was offered the most simple and practical procedure for studying the quality of banking services. Such a study can be carried out by one of the bank employees, process the data obtained on a personal computer using the Microsoft Excel (r) program, and present the results to the bank's management for decision-making on improving the quality of service in the bank.

A more complex and thorough study of service quality includes the third stage - measuring the importance or significance of quality factors for consumers. In addition, there are more sophisticated options for analyzing the results obtained and more effective ways of presenting data. Which of these approaches to choose depends on the management of each bank and, obviously, on the degree of interest in providing a high quality service to their customers.

Eduard Vladimirovich Novatorov works as an associate professor at the Department of Management at the St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions. In 1993, he defended one of the first Ph.D. dissertations in Russia on service marketing. From 1993 to 1995 completed an internship in the Netherlands with the award of a master's degree. From 1995 to 1999 under the guidance of professors L. Berry and D. Crompton, he did research in the field of service marketing at the Texas A&M University Business School (USA), where he subsequently defended his dissertation and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.).
e-mail: [email protected]

APPENDIX

Questionnaire "SERVQUAL" adapted for banking services

PART 1(WAITING)

INSTRUCTION: Please provide your opinion on the criteria that banking services should meet. Use the scale below to rate. If you fully agree with the statement presented, circle the number 5 next to it. If you completely disagree with this statement, then circle the number 1. The remaining values ​​(2, 3, 4) reflect the degree of your approach to one or another extreme point of view.

PART 2(PERCEPTION)

INSTRUCTIONS: Please express your opinion regarding the compliance of the services of the bank ______ with the criteria listed below. Again, use the scale below to evaluate. If you fully agree with the statement presented, circle the number 5 next to it. If you completely disagree with this statement, then circle the number 1. The remaining values ​​(2, 3, 4) reflect the degree of your approach to one or another extreme point of view.

The questions of the second part are similar to the questions of the first part of the questionnaire. Instead of the words “these banks”, the name of a particular bank is indicated.

LITERATURE

1. Andreev I. Criteria of competitiveness of homogeneous banking services / Marketing. - 1998. - No. 1. - S. 35-41.

2. Gronroos C. (1991). A service quality model and its marketing implications / European Journal of Marketing. Vol. 18, No. 4. R. 36-44.

3. Parasuraman A., Zeithaml V. & Berry L. (1985). A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research / Journal of Marketing. Vol. 49 (Fall). R. 41-50.

4. Berry, L. L. (1983). relationship marketing. In Emerging Perspectives on Services Marketing. American Marketing Association. Chicago, Ill. R. 25-28.

5. Parasuraman A., Berry L., Zeithaml V. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring customer perceptions of service quality / Journal of Retailing. Vol. 69 (Spring). R. 12-40.

6. Innovators E. V. Specifics and features of the audit of marketing services / Marketing and marketing research in Russia. - 2001. - No. 34 (4). pp. 50-59.

An indispensable attribute of a client-oriented bank and the most important factor in retaining a client and creating comfortable service conditions for him is a clear system for assessing the quality of customer service. There is an organizational component to this problem. We are talking about the feedback of any management process, including customer base management. Hence the objective need to obtain information from customers about the quality of work with them by the services and divisions of the bank, conduct all kinds of surveys and studies, analyze comments and suggestions, and other forms of work. Organizationally, this work is carried out by a special service or one of the employees of the customer relations department.
There is one important point in this work: a number of countries of the world (USA, Switzerland, Germany, etc.) have already established a system for determining the national customer satisfaction index, which combines industry-specific customer satisfaction indices. In Russian conditions, unfortunately, the published bank ratings do not contain an assessment of the opinion of the clients of these financial and credit institutions on the quality of their service, which, in our opinion, is a big drawback in the work of both the compilers of these ratings and in the work of many institutions, especially focused on working with clients (banks, insurance companies, pension funds, trade and service enterprises, and a number of others).
Factors influencing the client's attitude to the bank, his expectations for interaction with the bank.
A. Needs (interests) of clients.
It is necessary to note the reliability of banks and organizations with whom the client works. After the banking crisis of 1998, it is this component that is prioritized when a client chooses a bank, insurance or investment company. And the client also needs other companies as reliable, predictable organizations that will not disappear overnight, often with the money (or goods) of clients.
The next factor in the expectation of the quality of customer service is the complexity of service. The client does not want to interact on the spectrum of his needs with many banks or companies. The ideal case is when my client requests are solved in one place, I work with the same people, I know them and their bank. That is why banks should be welcomed, taking on the additional burden of maximizing customer support in its variety of requests and wishes. Taking into account the current state of the Russian economy, it is necessary to highlight the convenience of financial customer service in this factor. If we take banks, then it is important to offer the client a wide range of financial instruments that are convenient for settlements with this bank (taking into account the capabilities of the banks serving these clients). We are talking about credit cards, checks, letters of credit, promissory notes and other instruments, such types of customer banking services as factoring, financial leasing, client risk hedging, etc. Apparently, the wider the range of such instruments, the clearer the advantages of each of them for specific client. The wider the possibilities of servicing banks, the higher the client's satisfaction with their interaction with this bank.
If we take other financial institutions, then the convenience of customer service depends on how these institutions know and understand the financial problems of the client and how much the services and products provided by these institutions affect the solution of the most pressing problems of the client, especially in the field of taxation and financial management.
The next component of the factor of knowing the needs (requests) of the client is the security of the client, including the preservation of the confidentiality of negotiations and transactions, security in the office and parking lots, in storing valuables and information about the client and his accounts, financial opportunities. This component is provided by a complex of technical means (including in the field of information technology and their protection), well-trained personnel who can work with confidential information. The criterion for evaluating the security of the client is the existing precedents in this area, the real reputation of the bank.
An important factor in understanding consumers (requests) of clients is their information support both about goods and services, their prices and volumes, and about the state of the bank itself, its reliability, stability.
In understanding the needs (requests) of customers, factors such as after-sales customer service, ease of delivery and return of goods, convenience in terms of the location of the bank, its hours of operation, clarity and speed of transactions are of great importance.
B. Image of the bank. Here everything plays a serious role - both the appearance of the bank and its employees, and the method of presenting the goods, and reliability.
The public opinion of clients seriously affects the image of the bank. As studies of the consulting center IMD show, dissatisfied customers are the most dangerous for the bank's image. They are silent and do not try to complain and get solutions to their problems.
The actions of its leaders on the transparency of the bank's actions (press conferences, analytical articles, etc.) have a serious impact on the image of the bank. Interesting work evaluating the effectiveness of such transparency has been done by researchers at the consulting firm Price Water House Coopers. The lack of well-formalized and streamlined procedures not only hinders the development of business relations, scares off investors and clients, but also means additional costs for entrepreneurs (the so-called transparency tax). According to these researchers, Russia is in the penultimate place in the list of 35 countries evaluated (only China is below), having the following indicators on the impact of opacity on the cost of capital: opacity factor - 84; opacity tax - 43; risk premium for lack of transparency - 1.225 (for comparison - in the best country - Singapore, these figures are 29, 0, 0, respectively).
From these examples, the conclusion follows: the bank must have well-established procedures that show the transparency of its financial and other commercial activities, and this is beneficial to the bank itself. Techniques to strengthen the positive image of the bank: press conferences; analytical articles about the bank, its clients; charity; holding "open days" of the bank for new customers who want to understand in detail the advantages of this bank and meet with its top managers for a detailed discussion of issues of interest to customers; scientific symposiums, conferences held at the bank's own expense, the topics of which have a great public resonance; demonstration of business support technology for their clients and a number of others.
The image of the bank is affected by: the appearance and external advertising of the bank, the appearance of the bank's employees and their goodwill towards each other and towards customers; established reputation of the bank
1 See: How much does opacity cost // Vedomosti. 2001. No. 13 (336).
as a reliable, accurate in calculations, profitable in terms of the range of goods and services, with its tariff (price) policy of a business partner.
B. Problems of assessing the quality of customer service.
Forms and methods for assessing the quality of service relate to the methods of customer surveys and their perception of the level of service in a given bank.
Practicing:
a) general research on the opinions and expectations of clients (customer surveys 1-2 times a year and comparison of research results), including on certain aspects of working with clients. Our caveat in working with the questionnaire is the special attention to the very procedure for conducting surveys and research. It is important not to count on automatism and simplicity of actions (“I laid out questionnaires in front of the window of the operating worker or at the seller’s table, let them take them and return them filled out”), because in these cases they do not work. Serious work is needed to prepare and conduct such surveys, including, at a minimum, the selection of a group of specially trained employees who know the elements of sociology, the concept of “representativeness of the sample of respondents”, personal meetings of these people with clients, conversations with the heads of client organizations (with people in management, making decisions on interaction with this bank, company), processing the results of surveys;
b) assessment of the degree of customer satisfaction immediately after the transaction, purchase or registration for cash management services. Such studies are needed both to assess the client's initial perception of the procedures for making a purchase, transaction, personnel actions, and to subsequently compare this initial assessment with the results of studies on the expiration of long periods of customer service in a given bank. Along the way, the degree of customer migration is also revealed, the figure of real customer departures is ascertained;
c) interviews with client groups. Most often, it occurs during scheduled meetings between the management of the bank and its divisions with clients (we discussed the benefits and necessity of such meetings above), although so-called focus groups of clients are also possible, providing answers to the most important service problems. Working with focus groups requires special knowledge from employees or the involvement of outside specialists in such research;
d) expert assessments of the competitiveness of client technologies. In such studies, the most important task is to obtain reliable information about the accepted procedures for working with clients of other related businesses, especially competing banks. This is done with the help of simple observation when specialists of this bank come to another bank under the guise of clients. We have already mentioned the form of conversations on such technologies with former employees of competing banks (it does not matter whether they came to work in this bank or work in completely different industries). A lot is given by conversations with clients who are served in different banks. It is important for the bank to establish a procedure for such a regular assessment and make appropriate adjustments to its existing client technologies. Each bank employee working with clients should have the task of studying the market for such services and assessing the competitiveness of those methods and procedures that determine the quality of work with clients and which he uses daily in his work;
e) analysis of complaints, comments and suggestions of customers. One of the central tasks in organizing the work of a modern client-oriented bank is to ensure that complaints, comments and suggestions from customers are fully taken into account, and all channels of their silence in the bank are blocked. The Customer Relations Department is obliged to regularly (better weekly) report to the bank's management about the presence of such complaints and suggestions, the progress of their consideration and implementation in essence. Today, there are special information programs on the market for such services that can systematize such information. You can also work on paper, regularly collecting reports from all the heads of services and departments on the existence of such statements, their essence and the measures taken to correct the situation. It is important to achieve a real analysis of the dynamics of customer dissatisfaction, understand the causes of the problem and take effective measures to correct the situation. It is good when there is annual information on such problems;
f) checking the quality of work with clients of employees and departments of the bank. Unfortunately, not all banks have a well-functioning system for assessing the quality of work with clients of its employees and departments. At best, such an assessment is carried out for 1-2 departments. Most often these are operational departments and customer relations departments. Criteria for assessing the quality of service have not been worked out even for these divisions, the issues of standards (norms) for the quality work of employees at their workplaces have not been resolved. In our view, such work should have a clear managerial and organizational structure: an assignment to the client relations department to coordinate the work on assessing the quality of customer service by all departments working with clients, the department having developed parameters for such an assessment and funds to ensure this work, encouraging the best of employees , adequacy of authority and a top management-controlled schedule for such work with a final report to the board.
A good final chord in such work is the rating of the bank's customer-oriented divisions.
This procedure (both rating and summing up) should attract the attention of the local press, advertising and public relations departments, even the clients themselves. Public display of such things has a positive effect on the image of the bank, strengthens its customer base.
It is possible to have a serious conversation about the quality of customer service if there are people (or the service as a whole) who are in charge of this type of activity. And it doesn't matter how many people are included in this service - one or ten, it is important that this type of work exists in the bank's regulations and its main production technologies, there are procedures for its conduct and there are those responsible for the final results.