Credit bank features among top lenders in customer care

CS Mwangi Kiunjuri and Head of business banking Credit Bank Pamela Mutembei. [File, Standard]

The Credit Bank plc has been named amongst top three banks offering best customer service according to a report by Kenya Bankers Association.

The survey conducted in the last quarter of 2018, placed Credit Bank, a Tier III bank, third to Equity Bank and Standard Chartered Bank who were first and second respectively.

KBA director of communication Nuru Mugambi said the results were an indication that excellence in customer service could be leveraged as a competitive advantage and banks will want to continue to improve their customer experience as both a retention and growth strategy.

Credit Bank head of business and marketing Pamela Mutembei said they took pride in offering customer financial solutions and were glad that their customers are feeling the impact.

"Banks are at the core of the basic credit cycle, turning the economic wheel of the country. As much as the big banks tend to have large balance sheets and greater market share, customer experience is blind to size. No customer experience is unique to any tier," said Mrs Mutembei.

AI in customer service

According to the report Kenyan banks have not warmed up to having robots and artificial intelligence in handling customer service.

It outlined that customer contact centres were the most preferred means across all age-sets followed by email correspondence but highly preferred by the older.  

Customers, however, still prefer technology-driven service during the interactions with the customer service representatives.

"This indicates the bearing of disruptive financial technology on the expectations of customers, who now prefer an enhanced digital experience for convenience, relative to the conventional brick-and-mortar model," the Survey noted.

The survey was conducted in conjunction with the 2018 Customer Service Week campaign that ran from September 23 to November 13, 2018.  

It survey was administered through survey monkey, an online assessment tool to 6,121 respondents.

The sampling was random, and feedback was elicited through banks' online awareness campaigns, which called on the banking public to provide feedback on the survey.