Amidst the ravaging impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which necessitated limited contacts and social distancing even in banking halls, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc said the crisis created an opportunity to transform and deepen innovation in its customer service delivery.
Apart from taking steps to upgrade its banking platforms, the pan-African financial institution said it prioritised optimum service delivery to ensure customers continue to enjoy seamless and first rate services despite the pandemic.
UBA’s Head of Operations, Alex Alozie, said during a virtual media parley on Wednesday as part of the 2020 Customer Service Week that since the outbreak of the pandemic, the bank intensified its focus on putting the customer first while reaffirming its leadership position among its peers.
Mr Alozie said that the bank has embarked on several strategies in its transformation efforts to guarantee that all listed affiliates and more were fully streamlined to ensure customers enjoy the best of services.
The Customer Service Week is an annual celebration globally in recognition of the importance of customer service, to appreciate the staff who serve and support customers with care and professionalism.https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
The theme of this year’s celebration tagged: ‘Dream Team’, embodies UBA’s core goals, which Mr Alozie noted , have recorded considerable improvement.
“In the last one year, we (UBA) embarked on an intensive drive to transform our services to customers, not only in our banking halls in Nigeria, but also across Africa and beyond, to all the regions where we operate.
“We have ensured our customers enjoy optimal self-service, where they can make use of their devices to carry out any form of transaction seamlessly, without having to go to the banking halls. We have seen a lot of improvement in this area, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In fact, I can say the pandemic brought out the best of us. With newly improved products like UBA Connect – where our customers can carry out transactions from anywhere in the world – and our recently improved mobile applications, our uptime has improved significantly, and our branches have also recorded considerable improvements. All these are a result of the transformation journey embarked upon by the bank,” Mr Alozie said.
Also, he said despite little cases of failed transactions, the bank has taken leadership in putting in place models to allow customers to be actively refunded immediately in such instances.
UBA’s Group Head, Marketing and Customer Experience, Michelle Nwoga, said the bank’s determination to provide exceptional customer services informed the initiation of various strategies to upgrade its service delivery in order to differentiate UBA from other banks.
“It is interesting to note that UBA has been paying attention to the little things that matter to customers. We have been focused on innovating for our customers, optimizing our processes, upgrading our technology all in our effort to improve on our customer service delivery. We have seen that these have yielded good results. We will continue to work endlessly to use technology to support the growth of our platforms,” Ms. Nwoga said.
Besides, she said UBA has embarked on thoroughly equipping its workforce to deliver exceptional services as a data driven institution.
Describing UBA as an organisation that is no longer a one-size-fits-all financial institution, Ms Nwoga said the bank now has personalised services based on individual specific demands.
This, she explained, was largely because the bank sees the customer as the only one that matters, and deserves to have services and all our activities tailored in line with their expectations.
