Enhanced client experience through a Kaizen approach
Mario Bassi of Profidata Group
Apr 2, 2012
Over the past few years, especially after the financial crisis, there has been a shift in the preferences of private banking clients towards more personalised service offerings. Yet delivering personalised products and services requires banks to harmonise their internal processes and continuously improve their operations in order to meet rising client expectations.
Typically such process improvements can follow either a top-down approach or a bottom-up one. In a top-down approach, cross-functional process teams optimise business processes through interviews and workshops, at times using an existing industry recognised reference model. Such an approach is widely applied in business process re-engineering projects.
However, a bottom-up approach, such as Kaizen, could be more appealing because it focuses on simple improvements.
This premise has been the foundation of Solution Providers Kaizen approach, where employees, such as relationship managers (RMs), occupy the centre stage of a workshop and the process team supports the discussion in the capacity of a moderator. Teams model the processes independently using interactive methods.
The focus lies on simple and pragmatic improvements which can be driven independently by the different departments while still obtaining buy-in from the entire team.
When applied to front-office operations in the private banking industry, this would mean that RMs would be empowered to share their experiences, suggest improvements, implement changes and benefit from the improved client experience.
For example, consider a bank’s account-opening process, where a client is required to submit several documents to comply with regulatory requirements. Banks are expected to have a systematic process in place and a compliance department-defined checklist to ensure that documents are requested only once.
However, our project experience shows that at some banks this is not the case. Thus, there is a need for banks to continually reassess their internal processes.
Given the increased competition in the private banking industry, it has become more and more important for banks to constantly improve their back- and front-office processes in order to maximise the client experience.
Furthermore, as the bank processes become smoother, these improved processes will enable RMs to exercise their key skill – managing client relationships – instead of focusing energy to complete the bank’s internal processes.
Thus, a Kaizen approach can cost-effectively unlock hidden potential in the processes at private banks, enabling RMs to focus their time on meeting their clients’ needs, and in turn, expanding the overall client experience in a positive and constructive manner.
Senior Advisor Business Development APAC at Profidata Group
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