Partnership in our
soul
quality:
WORKING ON
WORKING ON
QUALITY:
4 International
A day in the life...
Client Panel
Staff satisfaction
survey
One of the most important and
ambitious customer-oriented
projects is 'Spend a day in the
life of our clients'. 'The concept
behind it is to learn at first
hand the business of
individual clients/ says
ISSUE 34/17 OCTOBER 1994
The kick-off meeting was only the first of a comprehensive
range of 31 projects designed to stimulate and improve the
quality of service to clients. We look at the background to the
quality drive and at some of the projects.
ation. 'Here in Utrecht, everyone
knows about the "Looking at
cost" project,' says Plasman.
'When we first started thinking
about streamlining our organiz-
ationin to what we hope will be
a top wholesale bank, we realiz-
ed that if we were to compete
with the best, we were going to
have to put our house in order.
Through benchmarking, we
found there was a lot to do in-
ternally, so we started getting
things organized. It's a process
that is still ongoing and one re-
sult will be the establishment of
an operations division. It was a
crazy situation, but we were a
wholesale bank that didn't have
an operations divison. Everyone
had their own internal structure
and their own budget, so the re-
sult was that everyone, and there-
fore nobody, was responsible.'
This realization led to the re-
structuring of the whole CBS in-
to a single, focused unit with one
operations division to service the
whole.
'It's actually no more than com-
mon sense,' Plasman says. 'We
were fragmented and that put us
at a great disadvantage when it
comes to service to clients, who
are the people who ultimately
pay all of our salaries. In the old
system, everyone had different
priorities - and only a few people
saw the cliënt as their primary
focus. Everyone was running
around doing their best, but it
wasn't channelled. We weren't a
unity. Now we have said: Every-
body is responsible for the
The 31 projects are the brain-
child of a quality task force
headed by Karei Plasman. They
form the second arm of an enor-
mous 'As good as the best' drive
to improve CBS' overall oper-
Rotterdam's GM Rob van Rooij
who heads this and a number
of other cliënt projects.
'Members of the credit
committee and other
managers will visit clients and
talk not only with financial
directors, but also with people
on the marketing and
production side. The added
value here is to reinforce our
relationship and that is advan-
tageous for both cliënt and
the bank.' The aim is to gain
real insight which can then be
passed on to staff through
briefings. Says Edwin Prevoo
of marketing services: A visit
of this kind will form part of
account managers' relation
ship development plans. We'll
be handling the coordination
and implementation will start
at the beginning of November
so that the first cliënt visits can
be arranged for early in the
new year.' The response from
clients had been extremely
positive. They have even
made suggestions for making
visits more effective and the
managers concerned are only
too willing to listen to them.
While the 'Day in the life' is
focused primarily on individual
clients, the panel approach is
more broader based in the sense
that a number of clients will be
invited to come to the bank four
times a year to discuss with
management specific products.
'But participating companies
will be involved at all levels,'
Prevoo explains, 'so we have an
ongoing overview of the types of
products they want ffom us.'
Again, cliënt response has been
very positive.
For the first time ever, the bank
carried out a survey to gauge
staff satisfaction. It will now
become an established feature
in CBS. 'We'll be going back to
staff every two years to ask for
their views and opinions on
how we work,' says Harry
Keizer, who heads this
particular project. The results of
the current survey have now
been processed and analyzed