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

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blad 'Raboband International' (EN) | 1994 | | pagina 4