Since the second half of last year, as market demands for securities, funds and personal banking were rapidly expanding, the long lines of customers at various banking outlets have become a public concern.  China Construction Bank (CCB), with “customer focus” as its management philosophy and with provision of superior customer service as its top priority, has taken up the study of the queuing phenomenon as a major service issue.  Subsequently, eight measures have been adopted and implemented, and the problem has since been greatly alleviated, winning much praise from all and sundries.  Recently, the CCB manager responsible for tackling the problem has explained these eight measures in detail.

1.    Redouble efforts to expand the branch network and install self-service banking facilities.  It is CCB’s contention that, as country-wide provision of financial services has not been able to keep up with domestic economic development, a structural discrepancy in supply and demand has resulted.  In the last two years, to meet the surge in demands in personal banking services, CCB has invested huge sums of money to increase its provision of financial services.  As a result, over 5,000 of its branches have been renovated and up to 27,600 sets of self-service banking facilities have been installed.  At the same time, CCB has redoubled its effort in making structural adjustments, so much so that, even though resources have been in severe shortage, it has focussed on increasing the number of branches in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou where customer queues are longest.

Meanwhile, CCB has been expanding the functions of its self-service banks continuously.  To date, these banks are already capable of handling up to 100 types of transactions, while cash withdrawals at ATMs now account for some 80% of all Dragon card cash withdrawals.

2.    Seek out the experience of foreign banks and quicken the pace of reengineering retail branches with the main aim of reducing customer queuing time.  During reengineering, a number of measures have been identified as effective in reducing customer waiting time.  These include regarding the redesigning of bank lobbies as pivotal in improving customer services, adopting intelligent queuing systems, designating different counters for different types of transactions, separating counters for cash transactions and non-cash services, etc.  CCB has now completed its pilot reengineering projects, which demonstrate that 90% of customer waiting time can be reduced to under 10 minutes—a significant improvement over conditions before reengineering.  CCB therefore plans to duplicate such reengineering measures within the next two years.

3.    Optimise business processes to increase transaction efficiency.  A “Process Optimising and Efficiency Enhancement Team” has been set up in CCB.  So far, more than 70 areas for improvement on existing processes have been identified and an average 31% increase in efficiency on the part of CCB tellers has been achieved.  CCB has now made the task of the team an ongoing job, allowing continual optimisation of processes at its counters.

4.    Further expand the functions of internet-banking, phone-banking and mobile phone banking, thereby allowing the handling of most non-cash and securities businesses through e-banking.

5.    Accelerate the pace of financial innovation and increase the number of payment and settlement channels.  CCB is now making it possible for private account holders to make payments and withdrawals throughout the country, so that these customers are not obligated to return to their respective account opening branches.  Instead, they simply can go to the nearest CCB branch to make their banking transactions.  This measure has the effect of evening out differences in the length of queues among different branches.  In addition, noting that most of its customers are used to carrying out most transactions in cash, CCB is beginning to offer more options to private account holders by running pilot projects to promote the use of cheques in selected branches.

6.    Intensify staff training to upgrade professional skills.  Once every two years, CCB provides nation-wide training for all of its front-line staffs.  The aim is to develop their professional skills and increase their service efficiency.  In addition, training of branch managers has been made a main thrust of CCB's training programmes.  Their training is held in conjunction with the Hong Kong and Shenzhen branches of CCB, so that these staffs, through their direct experience of how banking services are provided in more developed areas, can adopt what they have learnt in their own working environment.

7.    Intensify inspection and supervision of service staffs in the branches.  CCB has established the system of sending in undercover inspectors to visit its branches, and the reports of such inspections have been incorporated into staff appraisal records.  In addition, it is promoting the development of “branch ethos”.  This is effected by having branch managers and supervisors teach their staffs by precept and example, develop their job skills and motivate them.  Moreover, they are responsible for creating a harmonious working environment in their respective branches in order that work efficiency can be improved.

8.    Optimise team work and fully utilise resources in the branches.  CCB is vigorously implementing a division of labour in its front-desk and back-room operations.  Also, in order that efficiency can be improved, it is working on streamlining its front-desk operations by assigning much of the operations to the back office.  In addition, it is enforcing an “integrated teller system” so that disparity in workloads among tellers of the same branch can be eliminated.

Through the implementation of all these measures, it has been discovered that, in spite of rapid expansion of business, queuing problems in the branches have not deteriorated.  In fact, in those branches which have undergone reengineering, queuing time has been substantially reduced.  From data obtained from a CCB’s sample survey, it is found that 70% of the branches has no more than three customers in each queue, 20% has 4-6 customers, and only 3% has eight customers or more.  Moreover, it has been observed that the phenomenon of customer queuing is much influenced by season, by the stage of development, and by the locality of the branches involved.

The CCB manager who is dealing with the queuing problem has also pointed out that, after CCB has adopted the joint stock system and is listed in the stock market, it has implemented a number of very effective reforms and renovations.  On the one hand, its governance structure has been continually been perfected through reforms in organisational structure and adjustments in operating strategies.  On the other hand, using its management philosophy of “customer focus” as a central theme, it has been optimising its operations, renovating its products and services and intensifying its marketing and customer service efforts.  The result has been a rapid yet steady expansion of all aspects of its business and a significant increase in its overall operating capabilities.  In future, CCB will adopt further measures to ensure that it can provide its customers with better products and more convenient services.