The Customer
by Jopie Jusuf

Do you know who pay your salary? The bank you work with of course, and that's true. But who pay the "bank's salary"? The answer is the customers. Imagine that a bank doesn't have any customer, will their employees still have the payroll every month?

That basic question brings us to the main issue, which is, the importance of  so called "the customer". According to modern business paradigm, the success of a business (and even a non-profit organization) depends on their orientation toward marketplace. There's no organization will survive if they have a self-orientation paradigm (what's so called "marketing myopia" by Theodore Levitt) instead of market-orientation paradigm.

This market-orientation paradigm should be reflected in every employee, I mean every single employee, behavior. You are dead wrong if you think that the employees who should serve customer are those from marketing or customer service department. Every bank's employee should serve customer, no matter what department they come from, either from marketing, customer service, or other supporting department such as loan administration, accounting, etc.

I'll explore it in more detail (see picture). Departments in bank can be categorized into two general departments, what's so called "front office" and "back office". The Front Office is visible to customers and act as customer's interface department. The customers transact with bank through this front office employee, such as teller, customer service, marketing department, etc.

Another department, Back Office, is non visible to customers. The existence of it often is not  realized by customer, eventhough they are, actually, the ones who completed the transaction, such as transaction operation, billing department, etc.

In doing business with the bank, customer actually deals with both those two departments, but as explained, the existence of back office is often unrealized by customer, and consequently, ignored by the customer. For example, in credit/loan relationship, customer only deals with the Account (marketing) Officer, but that's only a little part of the whole story. Beyond that, there are many other departments involved to make the deals done and take place properly, such as legal department, loan administration, etc.

Regarding that, the matter of customer satisfaction is the matter of the whole departments, not just one or two certain departments. No matter how good a customer service interacts with the customer, for example, in accepting customer's request for bank reference, if the request couldn't be processed and completed properly and timely by other involved department, there's no customer satisfaction at all. If that happen, who's to be blamed? The customer service officer who accepting request, or the typist who types slowly, or the authorized signer who always busy, or ........

That's why if we are talking about managing customer satisfaction, we are talking about the involvement and commitment from the whole departments.

From the belief that people (employee) of the bank is the main factor in determining the customer satisfaction, that it is very important to make the people understand and behave toward it, and before the view can be flown down to the "lowest level" of the organization, the highest level (top management) should own the commitment first and reflected it in every policy they made. It is a top-down process since (like it was said) whatever the subordinate does to their customer is a reflection of what they receive from their manager.

One easy practical way to build or to enhance the awareness of the importance of customer and to develop the relevant capability  is by conducting periodically workshop/training.

The organizational structure should also support the customer's view. One type that get a lot of attention recently is the flat organization which put the customers in the top of the chart, and put any other department as a function that serve that customer. Hence,  the focus of all departments is to serve customer.

I really believe that bank will success only if they really apply the market-orientation view in running the business. The focus and energy is really serving customer.....not just a lip service campaign.

(this article had been published in Bali Info, March 1994. Bali Info is Bank Bali's internal magazine)