Poor customer service behavior of employees at joint stock commercial bank for foreign trade of vietnam – ho chi minh city branch

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Organization’s structure of Vietcombank Ho Chi Minh City Branch Figure 2: Evaluation of customer service at transaction counters of six commercial banks Figure

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Cao Huu Thuy Linh

POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE BEHAVIOR

OF EMPLOYEES AT JOINT STOCK COMMERCIAL BANK FOR FOREIGN TRADE OF VIETNAM – HO CHI MINH CITY BRANCH

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Cao Huu Thuy Linh

POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE BEHAVIOR

OF EMPLOYEES AT JOINT STOCK COMMERCIAL BANK FOR FOREIGN TRADE OF VIETNAM – HO CHI MINH CITY BRANCH

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: DR TRAN PHUONG THAO

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1

CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 2

1.1 Company Overview 2

1.2 Background of the problem 2

1.2.1 Individual customers’ complaints about VCB customer service at the counters 3 1.2.2 Evaluation of Vietcombank’s customer service quality compared to its competitors in the banking industry 5

1.3 Problem analysis 7

1.3.1 Low quality of service space and facility 9

1.3.2 Low interaction quality 10

1.3.3 Lack of reliability 11

1.4 Problem justification 13

1.4.1 Possible problems 13

1.4.2 Main problem 18

1.5 Cause validation 19

1.5.1 Training 19

1.5.2 Motivation 21

1.5.3 Design of customer service job 21

CHAPTER 2: SOLUTION 23

2.1 Alternative solutions 23

2.1.1 Contents of training 23

2.1.2 Methods of training 24

2.1.3 Training sources: 25

2.2 Selected solution for Vietcombank HCMC branch 27

2.3 Action plan 29

2.4 Conclusion 31

CHAPTER 3: SUPPORTING INFORMATION 33

3.1 Summary of methodology 33

3.2 Information of in-depth interviews conducted 33

3.2.1 In-depth Interview - Section 1 33

3.2.2 In-depth Interview - Section 2 39

3.2.3 In-depth Interview - Section 3 46

3.3 REFERENCES 48

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Organization’s structure of Vietcombank Ho Chi Minh City Branch

Figure 2: Evaluation of customer service at transaction counters of six commercial

banks

Figure 3: Customers’ evaluation scores for service provider and service environment

of six commercial banks

Figure 4: Initial cause-effect map

Figure 5: Final cause-effect map

Figure 6: Updated cause-effect map (alternative solutions added)

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Popular problems customers complain about Vietcombank HCMC branch Table 2: Result of evaluating quality of service provided by Vietcombank’s tellers Table 3: Demographic of customers chosen for interview

Table 4: Demographic of staffs chosen for interview

Table 5: Estimated cost for training program

Table 6: Action plan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The banking industry in Vietnam is becoming more comparative in recent years Big state-owned banks such as Vietcombank, BIDV and Vietinbanks now have to compete with various private banks which are rising quickly All the banks attempt to retain loyal customers and increase their market share, so they have to pay attention on improving the quality of customer service It is not a stretch to say that customer retention in the banking sector depends primarily on customer service Today’s customers are more knowledgeable of their options So once they have chosen a bank, they expect a high level of customer service The importance of customer retention in banks depends on these institutions stepping up to the plate and delivering on the quality of service that is expected

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the causes of poor customer service behavior problem at Joint Stock Commercial bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City branch (Vietcombank HCMC branch) This problem is viewed through the symptom of low customer’s satisfaction about service quality at Vietcombank counters

The findings of the study reveals that the main cause of this problem is the lack of a formal training program on customer service for all employees working at this field of the bank The findings are discussed in details in the research along with some recommendations for the company and management board to increase the level of individual customer service quality in order to improve customer satisfaction of Vietcombank HCMC branch

CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 1.1 Company Overview

Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) was established on 01/04/1963 from the Foreign Exchange Bureau (of the State Bank of Vietnam) From 02/06/2008, Vietcombank successfully implemented the equitization plan through IPO

During more than 50 years of growth and development, Vietcombank has contributed significantly to the stability and growth of national economy, upholding the role of a major foreign trade bank in facilitating efficient domestic economic growth as well as influencing considerably on regional and global financial community

Originated founded as a specialized bank for foreign trade, Vietcombank nowadays has become a versatile bank that provides customers with a wide range of leading financial services in international trade, including traditional services such as capital trading, capital mobilization, credit, project financing…etc., and modern banking segment such as forex trading and derivatives, card services, e-banking and so on Vietcomabank Ho Chi Minh City Branch (VCB HCM) was established in 1976 After more than 40 years of growth and development, VCB HCM has now become the largest branch in VCB system which contributes more than 30% of total profit before tax of Vietcombank in recent years Total asset of VCB HCM at 31/12/2016 was 102.808 billion VND, total deposit was 99.851 billion VND and total loan was 76.258 billion VND

Figure 1: Organization’s structure of Vietcombank Ho Chi Minh City Branch

(Source: Human Resources Department of Vietcombank HCMC Branch)

1.2 Background of the problem

Board of Directors

Accounting

department

Service departments

Trade

offices

Individials service department

Corporate service department

Credit departments

Individuals Corporate

Technical department

Human resources

This part discusses the problem of low evaluation of individual customer service quality at Vietcombank’s service department

Service department (or front office) of Vietcombank includes customer service departments and trade offices that serve customers directly at counter with most of the basic services of the banks, such as depositing, withdrawing or transfering money, etc Vietcombank HCMC branch has eleven trade offices and two customer service departments which are front offices and serve both individual and organizational customers directly through transaction counters Tellers working at these trade offices are the face of the bank, thus they should be prepared with high skills of customer service Service quality for individual and organizational customers are both important, but individual customer service is more essential to the bank since Vietcombank wants to develop its market share in retail banking sector with the target

to become “The Vietnamese number-one bank in retail banking sector” Besides that, number of individual customers are much higher than organizational customers for a bank Therefore, a report by VCB showing increasing number of complaints of individual customers in recent time (discussed in part 1.2.1) is a threat for this bank’s development Thus, this thesis wil focus on analyzing service quality for individual customers only, instead of both individual and organizational customers, through two main symtoms mentioned in this part as following: Increasing customer complaints and low customer evaluation compaired to competitors

1.2.1 Individual customers’ complaints about VCB customer service at the counters

In recent years, Vietcombank has focused on developing its market share in retail banking sector with the target to become “The Vietnamese first ranked bank in retail banking sector” However, Vietcombank often receives complaints about customer service quality by individual customers who have experienced customer service at the bank’s transaction counters Being the largest branch of Vietcombank, HCMC branch

is also the branch that receives most complaints from customers

According to figures provided by Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department in monthly Customer Service Report, which is sent to all employees by email, number of complaints about customer service quality at Vietcombank hotline

has always accounted for more than 60% in recent months in 2017, in which HCMC branch often accounts for the highest percentage (about 20%) since its scale is much larger than others The below table shows the sectors of complaints and popular problems customers are not satisfied with after they experienced service at Vietcombank HCMC branch’s counters

Table 1: Popular problems customers complain about

- Tellers take long time to get the transaction done

- Tellers make errors during making the transactions

- Low consulting quality

- Tellers show bad attitude towards customers

Product problems (card,

ATM, ) (39%)

- Card has not been activated

- Customers' information has not been updated

- Debit/Credit card is stuck in the ATM

(Source: Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department)

It can be seen from the table that 61% of the complaints for service at Vietcombank HCMC branch is about customer service, including bad service and attitude of employees

Not only receiving lots of complaints at hotline number, it is also recorded that Vietcombank are often complained about bad customer service by individual customers on social media Through a survey done in 2016 by BuzzMetrics - a local research company in Vietnam, Vietcombank is one of the local commercial banks that received most complaints about customer service quality through discussions and comments of customers on social networking sites like Facebook and forums, stated

by Kim1 Service quality of Vietcombank and other state-owned banks are always evaluated to be not as good as services at private banks such as Techcombank, Sacombank, ACB and so on Especially, bad staffs’ attitude towards customers is the most serious problem of Vietcombank’s service quality when it accounts for 21% of comments on social media1

1.2.2 Evaluation of Vietcombank’s customer service quality compared to its competitors in the banking industry

Planning to enlarge the market share of individual customers, Vietcombank defines that customer service is one of the key factors that attract individual customers and keep them stay with the bank as royal customers Acknowledging that individual customers are not satisfied with service they provide, Vietcombank HCMC branch has investigated this weakness by comparing customer service quality evaluated by individual customers between Vietcombank and five other popular commercial banks including Vietinbank, BIDV, Sacombank, Techcombank and ACB This program was conducted in July 2017 for all 11 trade offices and Individual Customer Service Department of Vietcombank HCMC Branches in Vietnam and a number of transaction counters of other five banks mentioned above A market research company was hired

by Vietcombank to send their staffs playing as secret customers These secret customers visited all the trade offices of Vietcombank HCMC and one trade office of each other five banks They played as normal customers and experienced the bank’s customer service, and then give score to criterias which were listed in advance The overal evaluation score for the six banks are as follow:

Figure 2: Evaluation of customer service at transaction counters

of six commercial banks

(Source: Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department)

Figure 2 illustrates result of Vietcombank’s evaluation program, which scored and compared customer service quality at counters of six commercial banks It is concerning that Vietcombank has the lowest score of 92,9 over 100 points together with Vietinbank, while the group of private banks have extremely high score, especially Techcombank ranked first in customer service quality with 97,4 points The evaluation was based on two factors, which are the quality of transaction offices and tellers/officers While Vietcombank’s transaction offices were rated with medium score that was in the middle range compared to other banks, Vietcombank’s tellers were not highly evaluated since the score given was almost the lowest one among six banks, as shown in Figure 3 below:

Figure 3: Customers’ evaluation scores for service provider and

service environment of six commercial banks

(Source: Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department)

The program evaluated customer service quality of the tellers based on five main criterias, and the scores for each factor are as following:

Table 2: Result of evaluating quality of service provided by Vietcombank’s tellers

Receiving and dealing with customers’ complaint

timely and responsibly

Attitude towards customers and professional knowledge and skills are the two factors that received the lowest scores with 73 and 82 points over 100 points respectively These are key factors that pulled down the overall score of Vietcombank and made this bank being ranked lower than competitors in customer service This result can be considered as a reconfirmation for the problem of bad customer service quality for individuals at Vietcombank While Vietcombank has strived to become one of the leading banks in retail banking section in recent years, the fact that its service quality for individual customers is not good enough to compare with private banks like Techcombank, Sacombank, might be a barrier for

it to retain royal customers and develop market share over its competitors in banking industry

1.3 Problem analysis

Previous studies of Salim2 found that in order to determine customer’s perceptions of the overall banking service quality, banking service product quality plays an important role According to Parasuraman et al3, there are ten dimensions in banking service quality and they are access, communication, competence, courtesy, credibility, reliability, responsiveness, security, understanding and tangibility Access means availability for help, ATM access, phone access, email access and account access when abroad Communication refers to clear answers, informing customer of important information, availability of status of transactions Competence means ability

to solve problems and knowledge to answer questions Courtesy is handling complaints in a friendly manner and consistently courteous Credibility means confidence in the bank’s service good reputation Reliability refers to correct service, keeping service promise, accurate records and keep promise as advertised Responsiveness refers to prompt service quickly, quick problem solving and convenient service Security includes the maintenance of confidentiality Understanding the customers means personalized attention And tangibility is the appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, printed and visual materials Gronroos4, on another manner, argued that perceived good service quality consists of six criteria: professionalism and skills, attitudes and behavior, accessibility and flexibility, reliability and trustworthiness, recovery, reputation and credibility Among

these criteria, the two criteria - professionalism and skills, attitudes and behavior - seems to be related to the symptoms of the non-satisfaction of customers about Vietcombank’s customer service, which was reported by Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department as following:

 Tellers take long time to get the transaction done

 Tellers make errors during making the transactions

 Low consulting quality

 Tellers show bad attitude towards customers

From the alternative literatures reviewed, unprofessionalism and low skills of Vietcombank staffs, and negative attitudes and behaviors are considered as potential problems that lead to low individual customer service quality at Vietcombank

In order to figure out the actual problems, we will conduct research with in-depth interviews to validate these potential problems The research will focus on the problem

of low individual customer service of Vietcombank HCMC branch only rather than the whole system of Vietcombank, since it is hard to do research on the whole system of the bank for a large bank with approximately 100 branches like Vietcombank Besides that, focusing on smaller scope of research would also allow us to develop more effective solutions

In order to identify the problem, the first section of interview was conducted for the group of four individual customers who came to different trade offices of VCB HCMC branches to make transactions These customers are interviewed about their feelings and comments for Vietcombank’s customer service quality after they visited the bank

to make transactions

Table 3: Demographic of customers chosen for interview

No Name of customer Age Gender Name of transaction point

2 Ha Thi Thuy 37 Female Individual Customer Service Dept

4 Truong Dinh Khoi 40 Male Ton Duc Thang Trade office

From the interviews conducted, there are some key reasons leading to the low evaluation of Vietcombank’s customer service quality at transaction counters,

including low quality of service space and facility, low interaction quality and lack of reliability

1.3.1 Low quality of service space and facility

Service space and facility can be understood as the space where service providing happens, which includes both interior and exterior of trade offices, transaction counters and other facilities at the trade office Through the interviews, four individual customers revealed that there are some problems about the bank’s space and facility that they were not satisfied with These customers agreed that if conditions about space and facility are improved, they would feel more comfortable and they evaluate the bank to be more professional The most popular problems they mentioned are as following:

 Unappealing transaction space (including both exterior and interior): trash on the floor; sloughing wall; disorderly equipment arrangement;

 Untidy appearance of transaction counter: unorganized documents/trash on the counter; tellers put their food, drink and things unrelated to work on the counter;

For more details, there is two out of four customers interviewed shared that she was not happy with the bank because of the unattractive appearance of the transaction space:

“I went to Le Thi Rieng trade office to get my cash deposited Outside the front door of the bank, there was some trash on the floor and they even put a broom and a mop on the way in Inside the office was also quite messy and unprofessional when they put a folding chair behind the transaction counter, which I guess is used for lunch break.” -

Mr Ba shared in the interview

Mr Khoi, who had made transaction at Ton Duc Thang trade office, also shared that:

“I have a little bit uncomfortable feeling about this trade office because it is quite old The paint on the wall is sloughing and outside the bank, the sign plate and logo of the bank are faded Not all trade offices of Vietcombank are like that, but I go to this office frequently because it is located near my work place If the bank’s facility is newer and the space is more luxurious, I would feel that their service is more professional.”

When asking these four interviewees whether they are satisfied with other service environment factors, Ms Hoa shared that sometimes she was also not glad to see

messy table behind the counter of the staff Some staffs also put drinks such as coffee

or milk tea on the table, which may make transaction documents get dirty if they are careless Both of them believe that it is necessary for the bank’s employees to show their professional appearance because that is one of the ways to express their respect to customers

From the interviews with customers, we can see that each customer have different problem to feel unsatisfied with the bank’s low quality of service space and facility, which was described as the problem of “low condition of service environment” in the research of Rust et al5 The study indicated that service environment have affection on the level of customer satisfaction When service environment is in good condition, customers feel more comfortable and they evaluate the bank to be more professional

1.3.2 Low interaction quality

From the interviews with customers, we observe that Vietcombank’s front-line staffs are not highly evaluated about the quality of interaction with customers There are many complaints about the tellers’ negative attitude and willingness to take responsibility Ms Hoa, one of the customers interviewed, shared that:

“I have used service of several local banks, and I am quite disappointed with the attitude

of Vietcombank’s staffs In general, they complete their job, but they did not show the high quality of service attitude For example, there were sometimes I met impolite officers who did not show any welcome attitude to me She did not smile with me during the time I sat at her counter waiting for transaction completed Even when I came and left, she did not say “Hello”, “Goodbye” and “Thank you”.”

Moreover, Mr Khoi who had a bad experience with the tellers at VCB Ton Duc Thang trade office also shared with us his story:

“When I informed the teller that I could not activate my internet banking account when

I registered for it for the first time because of the bank’s mistake of sending me the password late, her first reaction was to blame the fault to me when saying that the bank system always send password email immediately She said the reason was that I logged

on the account later than 24 hours as the bank had informed in the email I was really angry and asked her to recheck, after that she found out that the fault is due to the bank e-system.”

In addition, other interviewees agreed with the opinion that tellers at VCB office are not as friendly as other banks, especially private banks like Techcombank and Sacombank Some of them also shared that sometimes they have to wait for a long time only for a simple transaction, but the tellers did not explained to them the reason and also did not informed them the time to wait, thus they feel that they are not fully respected by the bank staffs

Gronroos6 confirmed the importance of interaction in the overall quality of service Interaction quality can be defined as a customer’s experience as a result of the interaction with the human element of the service organization, stated by Alexandris et

al6 Gronroos7 explained that service quality consists of two dimensions: functional (process/interaction) and technical (outcomes) dimensions The functional dimension refers to customer perceptions of the interactions that take place during service delivery, while the technical dimension is what customers receive in the service encounter (the outcomes) From this definition, it can be understood that good interaction (functional dimensions) between the bank staffs and customers results in higher customer satisfaction However, the interviews with customers show that they are not satisfied with interaction quality of Vietcombank’s employees, which is resulted from some symptoms as following:

 Unfriendly attitude of tellers

 Irresponsible feedback for customer’s complaints

 Unwillingness to solve customer’s problem

After examining related literatures, it is demonstrated that all of the symptoms mentioned above refers to the problem of poor customer service behavior (CSB) of staffs towards customers

1.3.3 Lack of reliability

From the interview, some customers disclosed that sometimes they felt lack of reliability with the bank when making their transaction Two out of four interviewed customers shared that they have experienced this problem in detail:

“Yesterday I went to Ton Duc Thang trade office to close my bank account and withdraw money I received my money and thought that the transaction was smoothly completed However, this morning, the bank’s staff called me and informed that there was an amount of money transferred into my account yesterday but due to mistake of

the bank system, that amount of money was not presented in my account at the time I closed it, so today the bank will transfer to me that amount of money From the customer’s point of view, I think that kind of mistake makes me feel lack of reliability

on the precise and safety of the bank” - shared by Mr Khoi

Asking Ms Le Vi - Manager of Ton Duc Thang trade office about this occasion, she revealed that this kind of mistake already happened several times due to the procedure

of transaction system:

“In this case, the money transferred in to the customer’s account after the account is closed In a logical way, we think that the correct procedure is that after she closes her account, money cannot be transferred to that account anymore However, the fact is the bank system only truly closes the account at the end of the day after all the transactions are done Therefore, there is a gap for mistake when the bank system let the customer withdraw money and close account already but after that it still received money into that account on the same day.” - Ms.Vi said

Ms Hoa, another customer, also complained about the reliability of the Vietcombank’s banking process when she doubted that this bank has leaked his information for sales men of real estate She shared that:

“There was a time after I opened a credit card at Vietcombank, I received lots of calls from sales men of real estate to offering me their apartments I guess that my information at Vietcombank has been leaked out and I am not happy with that.”

These information above demonstrates that to some extent, Vietcombank did not gain customers’ total reliability, which is one of the factors affecting customer satisfaction,

as stated by Parasuraman et al8 From the interviews, factors contributing to the reliability of these customers include:

non- Employees of the bank provide error service

 Employees of the bank did not keep customer’s information confidential

All the problems complained by customers above would be a result of inefficient internal process, which was described by Salim2 As mentioned by Gronroos7, service quality is split into two dimensions: technical quality and functional quality Technical quality is how the customer receives the outcome of the process, as defined to include interaction quality mentioned in section 1.3.2 On the other hand, functional quality is how the service encounter is taken care and how the service provider functions In this

case of Vietcombank, the problem of inefficient internal process is referred to functional quality

As can be conluded from the interviews with customers, there are three possible problems leading to the low evaluation of individual customer service quality: low condition of service environment, poor customer service behaviors and inefficient internal process These potential problems are illustrated in the following is the initial cause-effect map:

Low customer service quality

Low quality

of service space and facility

Unappealing transaction space

Untidy transaction counters

Unstandardized appearance of employees

Low interaction quality

Unfriendly attitude

of tellers

Irresponsible feedback for customer's complaints Unwillingness to solve customer's problems

Lack of reliability

Staff makes errors when providing service Lack of confidentiality in customer's information

Low condition

of service environment

Inefficient internal process

These posible problems are justified through the second interview section, which was conducted with a group of four people: a teller and three managers working at Individual Customer Service Department, Le Thi Rieng and Ton Duc Thang trade offices of VCB HCMC branch These in-depth interviews were carried out after the interviews with customers, which help confirm the problems those customers complained in order to have a two-way approach towards the problems

Table 4: Demographic of staffs chosen for interview

Branch

Name of transaction point

Customer Service Department

3 Mr Phan Van Binh Manager HCM City Branch Le Thi Rieng

is poor customer service behavior

 Low condition of service environment

Service environment was defined and proved to affect the quality of device delivery and customer satisfaction through many studies in the past According to Rust et al5, service environment of the bank comprises of extrior and interior appearance of the bank facility, and appearance of service provider – in this case, service providers are the tellers of the bank Lin et al9 devided service environment into two catergories: physical environment and social environment Lin’s definition give a larger meaning for the term “service environment” while physical environment refers to ambient and design factors and social environment refers to the displaying of employees and customer climate6

About the influence of service environment on quality of service outcome, Lin et al9

mentioned that:

“Service environment plays an important role in service delivery because environment can foster pleasant emotion reactions, while strenthening customer perceptions and retention”

Ryu et al10 emphasized the influence of physical environment on customer satisfaction that pleasing physical surroundings (e.g., lighting, decor, layout and employee appearance) may determine to a large extent the level of customer satisfaction The study also explained that because services are mainly intangible and often require the customer to be present during the process, the physical environment can have a significant impact on perceptions of the overall quality of the service encounter, which

in turn affects customer satisfaction

After examining some prominent problems of service environment recorded by the customers, reconfirmation of the problems was made through the interviews with Vietcombank’s staffs and managers Firstly, for the occasions of unappealing transaction space at Le Thi Rieng and Ton Duc Thang trade office, the managers of these two trade offices, Mr Binh and Ms Le Vi, admitted the bad condition of facility and appearance in the present, but it is only temporary situation and they are going to fix it soon Because these offices are quite old, they have planned to repaint the wall and replace old and broken facilities in few weeks At this time, they are preparing for the reparation, thus there might be messy and unorganized appearance of the transaction space sometimes They acknowledge the downgrade of facilities for years, but because the procedure of getting permission to fix the building took long time to

be completed Therefore, we could not timely replace the old facilities From the complaints of customers, they would learn from this experience and attempt not to make similar mistakes again

Secondly, about the problem of untidy transaction counters, Ms Le Vi - Manager of Ton Duc Thang trade office shared that:

“Sometimes they place too many documents or files on their table, behind the counter, it might because there are too much customers to serve that day and with the high work load, they do not have enough time to organize their stuffs correctly and tidily As a manager, I understand and do not blame my employees for that However, the customers are right to feel bad about that problem, so I would remind the staffs to attempt to be neat all the time.”

In general, service environment quality of Vietcombank received some complaints from customers However, through the alternative depth interviews with the customers and bank’s staffs as well as managers, it is concluded that most of those problems are temporary and they are not the most significant causes that effect customer’s evaluation of Vietcombank service quality

 Poor customer service behavior

Customer service behavior (CSB) is a field that has been studied by many researchers

in the past and they also proved its importance in affecting the evaluation of customer service quality of a service organization Weiner11 quoted the definition of CSB from the research of Ryan and Ployhart as following:

“CSB is broadly defined as any activities of employees specifically directed toward affecting service quality (e.g., greeting or assisting customers, rectifying service failures).”

According to Weiner11, poor CSB, also understood as negative behavior of employees,

is believed to be one of the core factors lowering customer satisfaction As defined by Mckinney12, the term “employee behavior” refers to the way in which employees respond to specific circumstances or situations in the workplace Turkay et al13 have mentioned in their study that employees display appropriate behaviors for a service experience leads to customer’s perceive of high service quality of an organization But why does CSB play an important role for customers to evaluating their satisfaction

of the bank service? Weiner11 has distinguished a service-provided organization and a goods-provided organization by the intangibility of service as contrasted with the tangibility of goods And when the firm provides intangible service, customers will rely more on the service provider’s behavior as an indicator of the quality of the service they are receiving, as stated by Bowen14 Therefore, CSB plays an important role in enhancing evaluation of customer service quality

From the interviews with customers, they are not satisfied with some customer service bihaviors of Vietcombank’s employees, which include:

 Unfriendly attitude of tellers

 Irresponsible feedback for customer’s complaints

 Unwillingness to solve customer’s problem

When asking Ms Huyen, one of the tellers interviewed, weather she or her colleagues make one of the mistakes mentioned above and why, she admitted that sometimes she makes mistakes like not showing happy and open-armed reception or not saying

“Hello” and “Goodbye” to customers She was just unconsciously doing that and she thinks customers do not really matter about these tiny mistakes The reason is sometimes she has to serve a large number of customers in a day, so she feels tired and unconsciously shows unfriendly attitude towards customers

Ms Ha - Manager of Individual Customer Service Department of HCMC branch, admitted the fact that tellers of Vietcombank are not as friendly and polite as tellers of other banks In addtition, there are several times they show unprofessional behaviors to customers like irresponsibly feedback to customers’ complaints and unwillingness to solve customers’ problem

Mr Binh - Manager at Le Thi Rieng trade office - also has opinion about this issue:

“The ratio of old employees in Vietcombank is higher than other private banks At my department, 18 over 50 staffs at my department are over the age of 45, which is a relative high ratio These old officers often show bad attitude/behaviors towards customers more than the young generation, because they have that habit from the past when state-owned banks dominated the market and they did not have to provide good service to retain customers.”

All of the above interviews have illustrated that poor customer service behavior is the main problem that causes low quality of individual customer service at Vietcombank

It was a serious problem that the bank should investigate to find out the causes and solutions in order to improve its service quality

 Inefficient internal process

Salim2 defines internal process as a structure, messured set of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market As mentioned by Gronroos7, service quality is split into two dimensions: technical quality and functional quality Technical quality is how the customer receives the outcome of the process, as defined to include interaction quality mentioned in section 1.3.2 On the other hand, functional quality is how the service encounter is taken care and how the service provider functions In this case of Vietcombank, the problem of inefficient internal

process is referred to functional quality, which includes the two problems that customers blamed about VCB HCM’s service:

 Staff makes errors when providing service

 Lack of confidentiality for customer’s information

About the first problem, the errors customers complained were related to the function

of banking information technology of Vietcombank When asking Ms Ha whether there is any reason leading to the inefficiency of the bank’s internal process, she mentioned that it might because the technology system of Vietcombank is relatively old Vietcombank is one of the most long-standing bank in Vietnam, so its technology was developed before other banks Hence, nowadays this system is older than systems

of banks which were founded later Vietcombank is now in the process of improving this system, but it takes several years to complete Therefore, it can be understood that this type of cause is objective because the staff cannot control it, as previously explained by Ms Ha

Secondly, about the confidentiality problem, during the interviews with Ms Ha, she assured that confidentiality of customer’s information is compulsory at Vietcombank This bank has launched tight rules and regulations customer’s confidentiality and every staffs that break the rules would definitely receive punishment The leaking out

of information that the customer complained could be a misunderstanding which is caused by the coincidence of the situation

From the alternative interviews and literatures, it can be concluded that inefficient internal process is not the main problem that causes low evaluation of customers about Vietcombank service quality

1.4.2 Main problem

The depth interviews conducted with the bank’s employees and managers has explained that most of those problems are temporary and they are not the most significant problems that affect customer’s evaluation of Vietcombank service quality, except the problem of poor customer service behavior All the four customers interviewed shared their experiences and they were confirmed by the bank’s managers and employees that Vietcombank’s staffs often did not show friendly attitudes towards customers, some of them somtimes did not give responsible feedback for customer’s

complaints and were not willing to solve customer’s problem This problem has existed for long time but the employees themselves do not acknowledge all the serious sequences of the problem Besides that, the managers know the problem but have not find the solution to solve it Therefore, it can be concluded that the main problem that leads to low evaluation of Vietcombank’s individual customer service quality is poor customer service behavior of Vietcombank’s staffs

 Motivating employees: Lack of or inappropriate application of motivational tools such as clarifying expectations, goal-setting, providing feedback, recognizing and rewarding positive behaviors are factors that negatively affect CSB

 Design of customer service job: Some studies indicate that job design can facilitate CSB in the way of empowerment or knowledge enlargement

Based on these potential causes, two in-depth interviews were conducted again with

Ms Vu Thi Van Ha - Manager and Ms Vu Thi Huyen - teller of Individual Customer Service department of Vietcombank HCMC branch with the purpose of figuring out main cause of the problem

1.5.1 Training

Through the interview, the teller was asked for her point of view on the complaint of customers that Vietcombank staffs were behaving unprofessionally and not showing friendly and welcome attitude towards customers Ms Huyen - the interviewee - did not acknowledge that she was lack of the spirit to show her positive and responsible attitudes/behaviors towards the customers

“Ithink that it is hard to be happy and smile all day with customers when I am stressed with my workload I have tried my best to fulfill customers’ requirements.” - said by

Ms Huyen

Being asked about negative and irresponsible behaviors of some tellers in accessing and solving customers’ problem and feedback to their complaints, Ms Huyen also shared:

“I acknowledge that it was unprofessional attitude and behavior of staffs in banking service when they do not stand on their customer’s point of view to access the problem and push the fault towards customers Sometimes several colleagues in my department make this type of mistake but I think it is unconscious because they are not truly trained how to react correctly to customers’ complaints.”

Further sharing of this teller reviewed that most of the behaviors they presented to customers in their customer service job are unconscious and it is because they did not have enough skills and knowledge about customer service behavior Most of the time, the way they react to problems happening with customer is based on their owned working experiences and the culture of their working place

For further understanding about this issue, we ask manager of this department - Ms

Ha - for her opinions When being asked about what the bank managers have done to improve the attitudes and behaviors of these officers, Ms Ha shared that:

“Vietcombank nowadays has invested more in customer service, but training for employees about good attitude for customers is still not concerned enough by the managers.”

For specific, she revealed that there is no official and methodical training course about standardized customer service behavior/attitude for new tellers working in her department New employees learned their job only from experience of the older ones From the discussions, it is examined that there is a lack of formal training for Vietcombank staff on customer service including how to meet customer expectations, increasing assertiveness, dealing with stress and how to maintain good customer service delivery Weiner11 mentioned the importance of formal training programs that they are considered more critical to the success of service organization than other kinds of organizations and they may presents special challenges compared to entry-level training for other jobs because the content of training is often more interpersonal than it is technical in nature Salim2 also proved in her study that lack of training for employees about customer service behavior and attitude would result in lower evaluation of customers for the bank’s service quality

1.5.2 Motivation

Motivation plays an important role for promoting good customer service behavior of employees since if an employee is not motivated and happy with their work, it would

be hard for them to always show positive attitude to customers

When Ms Huyen was asked whether she felt unmotivated or had other problems in their job, she said that Vietcombank has appropriate policy to motivate their employees She was satisfied with the benefits and regulations of the bank, the managers are good and take care of their employees’ work life, and they do not want

to change their job in the future Sometimes the work load is over because they have to serve too many customers in peak hours, but they think it is their duty and they would try their best to finish the work In addition, according to Ms Ha - manager of Individual Customer Service department, the bank has applied policy and tools to motivate employees in providing high quality of customer service For example, Vietcombank has just installed the evaluation system at the bank’s transaction counters, which allows customers to give score for the level of service they are provided as well as showing their level of satisfaction This evaluation score is then used for employee appraisal and decide rewards and punishment for the employees However, this system is just being used from the beginning of 2018, so its effectiveness in enhancing CSB of Vietcombank needs more time to be verified

1.5.3 Design of customer service job

Some studies have found how characteristics of customer service job affect positive customer service behavior of employees Campion et al15 stated that task enlargement appeared to have costs for customer service, based on employee self-reports; however, knowledge enlargement (adding understanding of procedures or rules) led to better customer service, based on employee and manager reports Rogelberg et al16 found that job characteristics (e.g., autonomy) accounted for a significant amount of variance

in CSB

As reviewed by Ms Ha, at Vietcombank HCMC branch, customer service staffs are empowered to handle the problem of customer themselves, but they still need to ask for guidance and permission of their managers when the problem is out of their control According to the study of Campion et at15, this results in better customer

service behavior of employees because they can solve the problem more actively and customer does not have to wait for long time to be responded

In conclusion, through the analyzing of potential causes above and relevant literatures reviewed, it can be examined that the main cause that leads to the problem of poor customer service behavior of Vietcombank’s tellers is lacking of formal training program about customer service for employees The other two potential causes, which are employee motivation and design of customer service job, are not essential causes because there is no serious problem which can be extracted from the interviews

The chart below shows the final cause-effect map of the problem:

Figure 5: Final cause-effect map

Lack of formal training program (main cause) Low

customer satisfaction

Irresponsible feedback for customer's complaints

Unwillingness

to solve customer's problems

Unfriendly attitude of tellers

Lack of motivation in work

Inappropriate design of customer service job

Inappropriate training program

CHAPTER 2: SOLUTION 2.1 Alternative solutions

As mentioned in previous part, the main course that leads to poor customer service behavior of Vietcombank’s staff is the lack of formal training for employees about customer service Based on alternative literature reviews, this part will discuss potential solutions to create and develop a suitable customer service training program for Vietcombank HCMC branch

According to Hamza17, to design a training program for employees, there are some elements the organization needs to decide:

 The content of training

 The delivery methods to use

These elements are essential for providing a formal training program for employees because it decides the outcome of training program, which is knowledges and skills of the employees One another element that are essential to creating a training program is deciding training sources, which is internal or external training This process is important because based on which training content is, organization needs to choose appropriate training source to provide the most suitable and qualified knowledges and skills for employees – as stated by Hrzone18 as following:

“There are two distinct types of training One is product/services, policies and operations training, most of which is handled by HR or another internal department And then there is knowledge and skill-based training that is not company-specific and focuses on productivity, managerial, performance or some other specialized technical skill.”

2.1.1 Contents of training

Before observing some potential customer service training programs for Vietcombank HCMC’s employees, we need to understand what is training

Training is defined by Reid et al19 as:

“a planned process to modify attitude, knowledge or skill behavior through learning experience to achieve effective performance in an activity or range of activities Its purpose in the work situation, is to develop the abilities of the individual and to satisfy the current and future needs of the organizations”

Pinnington et al20 also defined training as: