The successful transformation of CCB Tianhe Sub-branch has won recognition and praises from customers, CCB headquarters management, Bank of America experts, leaders of the local Banking Regulatory Bureau, the banking industry association and provincial and municipal Civilisation Work offices.  Numerous people from within or without CCB have visited the Sub-branch to learn from their experience.  After listening to Tianhe Sub-branch’s presentation and reading their written material, many visitors would then ask: What other brilliant ideas do you have for effecting transformation?

Transformation of Mindset Prior to Transformation of the Bank

Right from the start of the transformation, CCB Guangdong Branch Party Committee had already attached much importance to the change of mindset and concepts.  The “Customer Focus” group of the Committee once again took up studying the talks and essays given by headquarters management on the subject of “Customer Focus”.  This was followed by discussions and reflections on issues related to transformation from the perspective of providing convenience and quality service to customers.  From CCB Guangdong Branch to Tianhe Sub-branch, from top management in Guangdong Branch to all members of the frontline staff, dealing with “transformation of mindset” before “transformation of the bank” has become a self-conscious action.

“Customer Focus” is neither an abstract notion nor a whitewash slogan, but is a collection of tangible actions which are reflected in the details of CCB’s transformation project.  In deliberating such measures as process optimisation, functional zoning, business categorisation, teller classification or customer signage, Tianhe Sub-branch’s main consideration is the needs and perception of the customers and not whether it can “only do it this way or that way”.  For example, in process optimisation, the main concern is to offer convenience to customers by eliminating similar or redundant procedures.  In functional zoning, the main concern is to offer a sense of security to its high-end customers by maintaining their privacy during transaction handling.  In drafting business guides, the objective is to ensure that they are understood by customers and are free of ambiguities, that they are user-friendly in terms of layout and visual impacts by using illustrations and short, simply sentences instead of long, windy ones.  Before these business guides are issued, they have be given to customers of different age groups and different education levels for feedbacks to ensure that they can be understood by and are useful to every customer.

The primary objective of outlet transformation is to provide customers with better services.  The key to providing quality service is the level of service awareness in the staff, which in turn is dependent on the positioning of staff roles.  For a certain period, no matter whether they were convening meetings or providing training, Tianhe Sub-branch management was always talking around the theme of “positioning of roles”.  The idea was to help the staff realise their role change during transformation: from “tellers” to “service providers” and “sales persons”.

Through training, most of the staff members have come to the realisation that, as service providers, their daily duties are to provide services to customers and to meet their needs.  They have also realised that customer satisfaction is the only standard against which service quality is measured.  They also understand that, as service providers, they should, during the course of providing services, promote the sales of CCB products appropriate to the customers, the time and the situation involved.  The purpose of providing service is to sell, and, in order to sell, better services are required.  This, then, is the “secret weapon” for successful sales commonly identified by customers.

Self-conscious transformation of mindset has brought about profound changes in staff perception.  This can be illustrated by a phenomenon.  In most banking outlets, customer complaints are to be avoided at all costs.  But to Tianhe Sub-branch staff, customers who make complaints are considered the most loyal customers.  This is so because a customer would complain and expect improvement only if he or she has some needs and identifies with CCB.  So in Tianhe Sub-branch, from the president to the frontline staff, everyone takes customer complaints seriously and endeavours to understand the inner voices and true needs of the customers.  Even for customer grumbles, the staff would carry out self-examination and use them to initiate self-criticism and continuous improvement.  Once, Su Ying, the lobby manager, overheard a customer complaining that there were fewer counters during the weekend.  She recorded that immediately and brought the issue up with the president at her first opportunity.  Subsequent investigation had discovered that some tellers had engaged their time in tallying cash in the ATMs.  So corrective actions were taken to ensure that service efficiency would be maintained during weekends.

Localisation of Foreign Experience

In transferring experiences from foreign banks, CCB Guangdong Branch has always insisted on emphasising actual situations in the local market and existing operating systems and mechanisms, on preserving “outlet ethos” and “essential factors in transformation” in accordance with headquarters requirements and on catering to practical considerations of the outlets in question.  Such “localisation” was in evidence when it first carried out service process optimisation and functional zoning in its outlets in conjunction with Hottinger Baldwin Measurement Co., Ltd.  It was also in evidence when it later carried out transference of outlet ethos on the request of Bank of America experts.

As regards the functional repositioning of an outlet after its transformation and the physical zoning of its functions, CCB Guangdong had not taken a simple transfer approach.  Instead, it had first sought to fully understand each transformation requirement, then turned over the requirements in mind and projected the consequences of the transformation and attempted to predict customer reactions.  The next step was to make a list of the specific changes to be made, and compare and analyse them against the situations in Bank of America in terms of operating environment, service targets, internal systems, performance indicators, etc.  Positioning of outlet functions was then determined by taking note of the differences between foreign and local situations and by holding onto the uniqueness of the outlets.  It was then decided that providing personal banking services would be the main function while providing corporate banking services would be secondary.  In other words, both personal banking and corporate banking would be covered.  Once this positioning was determined, CCB Guangdong Branch would give full consideration to the uniqueness of market needs and operating system in setting up new counters and in staff deployment.  Subsequently, it has added such contents as “Maintenance and Management of Customer Relationship” in its operations, localised its training material and introduced a work process for its account manager.  All these are well received in the market and much identified by customers.

Full consideration of domestic situations is also given in the physical zoning of various banking functions.  Thus, knowing that, in the use of e-banking, e-money and self-service facilities, local customers have only a short history (compared to foreign customers), very little chance (particularly for e-banking) and a lot of worries and doubts, a special area is set up for customers to try out e-banking and self-service facilities.  For target customers, the lobby manager will take the initiative to invite and bring them to the try-out area and get some experience and learn a few tricks.

As regard the transfer of the “encouragement card” practice from Bank of America, Tianhe Sub-branch has not taken the concept wholesale.  Instead, it has localised the concept only after conducting some surveys and studies first.  The way it is carried out by Bank of America, “encouragement cards” are mainly sent out by the officer-in-charge of an outlet to the staff.  In CCB, there are limitations to such a practice.  In an average CCB outlet, there are around 20 employees.  With such a relatively large group of subordinates, the officer-in-charge would not be able to get involved enough to know all the "bright spots” the staff members demonstrate in their everyday work and consequently these bright spots would not be completely reflected through the encouragement cards.  If bright spots are not reinforced in time, the work passions of the staff will cool off and damages to their initiatives will be made.  For this reason, Tianhe Sub-branch has added a new twist to the practice by promoting the practice of sending encouragement cards from one staff member to another or from a staff member to the officer-in-charge.  This way, everyone is directed towards noting and uncovering the bright spots and strengths of those working nearby and then write down his or her own compliments and vote of thanks on an encouragement card.  This localisation twist has transformed the original “one-way motivation” practice to a “two-way motivation” practice between a manager and the managed and to a “multi-way motivation” practice among staff members.  This way, motivation instances are more numerous and more widespread and much beneficial results are thus generated.  In recent years, a number of excellent employees have surfaced from Tianhe Sub-branch: Zhu Xiaodan, Wu Yan, Deng Chengnan, Xu Li, Su Ying and Lei Yuqin, all of them have received citation certificates of one kind or another from CCB Guangdong Branch or CCB Guangzhou Branch.  After her visit of Tianhe Sub-branch to have a first-hand experience of the mental outlook and professional quality of the staff, Ms Helen, Senior Vice President of Bank of America wrote, “I’m much honoured to come to visit you after you have successfully achieved transformation for your outlet.  I’m much impressed by your teamwork and by the liveliness and vitality of your outlet.”

Three Pre-conditions in Transformation

Transformation of banking outlets is a kind of system engineering involving a large number of factors.  Invariably there will be a lot of difficulties and obstacles in its implementation and it requires that the three pre-conditions of corporate leadership, multi-level training and specific measures should all be satisfied.

At the beginning of the transformation of Tianhe Sub-branch, a leading group headed by the Leader-in-charge of CCB Guangdong Branch was set up.  Members of the group include top management and representatives from the Financial Department for Personal Banking of CCB Guangdong Branch and top management from Tianhe Sub-branch.  This leading group was specifically in charge of communication with CCB headquarters, making decisions and arrangements in relation to major issues arising from the transformation and providing instructions throughout the transformation process.  In addition to listening to the briefings of the implementation group on the progress of the project, members of the leading group had also made on-site appearance from time to time to provide guidance in solving specific problems in the transformation.

Providing training in specific topics is the basis for the smooth implementation of outlet transformation.  In accordance with the requirements from CCB Guangdong Branch, Tianhe Sub-branch had given training in specific topics for its staff.  Moreover, the duration, format and contents of the training courses were different for different recipients.  The training courses had variously taken the form of classroom lectures, process rehearsals and on-site demonstrations.  In addition, there had been occasions in which the class was divided into several groups with some of the staff members playing the role of customers so that the participants were well prepared in dealing with possible problems that may arise after transformation.  Such role-playing was found to be very effective in training the staff.  Once training was effective, the staff members’ knowledge of the transformation was up to requirement and they were able to position themselves according to the requirements of the transformation and were able to enhance their business skills.

In addition, both CCB Guangdong Branch and Tianhe Sub-branch had launched a number of complementary measures.  While some measures allowed sufficient human, financial and material resources for implementing transformation, others provided detailed descriptions in the changes of duties before and after the transformation to help staff member better grasp the requirements of the transformation.  Still other measures were involved in setting service standards in details or in providing codes of conduct.  The implementation of all these measures was instrumental in providing a firm foundation for transforming Tianhe Sub-branch.