Poor customer service behavior of employees at joint stock commercial bank for foreign trade of vietnam – ho chi minh city branch

LIST OF FIGURESFigure 1: Organization’s structure of Vietcombank Ho Chi Minh City BranchFigure 2: Evaluation of customer service at transaction counters of six commercial banks Figure 3:

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Cao Huu Thuy Linh

POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE BEHAVIOR

OF EMPLOYEES AT JOINT STOCK

COMMERCIAL BANK FOR FOREIGN TRADE

OF VIETNAM – HO CHI MINH CITY BRANCH

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Cao Huu Thuy Linh

POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE BEHAVIOR

OF EMPLOYEES AT JOINT STOCK

COMMERCIAL BANK FOR FOREIGN TRADE

OF VIETNAM – HO CHI MINH CITY BRANCH

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: DR TRAN PHUONG THAO

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1

CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 2

1.1 Company Overview 2

1.2 Background of the problem 2

1.2.1 Individual customers’ complaints about VCB customer service at the counters 3 1.2.2 Evaluation of Vietcombank’s customer service quality compared to its competitors in the banking industry 5

1.3 Problem analysis 7

1.3.1 Low quality of service space and facility 9

1.3.2 Low interaction quality 10

1.3.3 Lack of reliability 11

1.4 Problem justification 13

1.4.1 Possible problems 13

1.4.2 Main problem 18

1.5 Cause validation 19

1.5.1 Training 19

1.5.2 Motivation 21

1.5.3 Design of customer service job 21

CHAPTER 2: SOLUTION 23

2.1 Alternative solutions 23

2.1.1 Contents of training 23

2.1.2 Methods of training 24

2.1.3 Training sources: 25

2.2 Selected solution for Vietcombank HCMC branch 27

2.3 Action plan 29

2.4 Conclusion 31

CHAPTER 3: SUPPORTING INFORMATION 33

3.1 Summary of methodology 33

3.2 Information of in-depth interviews conducted 33

3.2.1 In-depth Interview - Section 1 33

3.2.2 In-depth Interview - Section 2 39

3.2.3 In-depth Interview - Section 3 46

3.3 REFERENCES 48

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Organization’s structure of Vietcombank Ho Chi Minh City BranchFigure 2: Evaluation of customer service at transaction counters of six

commercial banks

Figure 3: Customers’ evaluation scores for service provider and service

environment of six commercial banks

Figure 4: Initial cause-effect map

Figure 5: Final cause-effect map

Figure 6: Updated cause-effect map (alternative solutions added)

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Popular problems customers complain about Vietcombank HCMC branchTable 2: Result of evaluating quality of service provided by Vietcombank’s tellersTable 3: Demographic of customers chosen for interview

Table 4: Demographic of staffs chosen for interview

Table 5: Estimated cost for training program

Table 6: Action plan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The banking industry in Vietnam is becoming more comparative in recent years Bigstate-owned banks such as Vietcombank, BIDV and Vietinbanks now have to competewith various private banks which are rising quickly All the banks attempt to retainloyal customers and increase their market share, so they have to pay attention onimproving the quality of customer service It is not a stretch to say that customerretention in the banking sector depends primarily on customer service Today’scustomers are more knowledgeable of their options So once they have chosen a bank,they expect a high level of customer service The importance of customer retention inbanks depends on these institutions stepping up to the plate and delivering on thequality of service that is expected

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the causes of poor customer service behaviorproblem at Joint Stock Commercial bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam - Ho Chi MinhCity branch (Vietcombank HCMC branch) This problem is viewed through thesymptom of low customer’s satisfaction about service quality at Vietcombankcounters

The findings of the study reveals that the main cause of this problem is the lack of aformal training program on customer service for all employees working at this field ofthe bank The findings are discussed in details in the research along with somerecommendations for the company and management board to increase the level ofindividual customer service quality in order to improve customer satisfaction ofVietcombank HCMC branch

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CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 1.1 Company Overview

Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) wasestablished on 01/04/1963 from the Foreign Exchange Bureau (of the State Bank ofVietnam) From 02/06/2008, Vietcombank successfully implemented the equitizationplan through IPO

During more than 50 years of growth and development, Vietcombank has contributedsignificantly to the stability and growth of national economy, upholding the role of amajor foreign trade bank in facilitating efficient domestic economic growth as well asinfluencing considerably on regional and global financial community

Originated founded as a specialized bank for foreign trade, Vietcombank nowadayshas become a versatile bank that provides customers with a wide range of leadingfinancial services in international trade, including traditional services such as capitaltrading, capital mobilization, credit, project financing…etc., and modern bankingsegment such as forex trading and derivatives, card services, e-banking and so on

Vietcomabank Ho Chi Minh City Branch (VCB HCM) was established in 1976 Aftermore than 40 years of growth and development, VCB HCM has now become thelargest branch in VCB system which contributes more than 30% of total profit beforetax of Vietcombank in recent years Total asset of VCB HCM at 31/12/2016 was102.808 billion VND, total deposit was 99.851 billion VND and total loan was 76.258billion VND

Board of Directors

department departments departments department resources

Trade

Individials Corporate service service Individuals Corporate offices

department department

Figure 1: Organization’s structure of Vietcombank Ho Chi Minh City Branch

(Source: Human Resources Department of Vietcombank HCMC Branch)

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This part discusses the problem of low evaluation of individual customer servicequality at Vietcombank’s service department.

Service department (or front office) of Vietcombank includes customer servicedepartments and trade offices that serve customers directly at counter with most of thebasic services of the banks, such as depositing, withdrawing or transfering money, etc.Vietcombank HCMC branch has eleven trade offices and two customer servicedepartments which are front offices and serve both individual and organizationalcustomers directly through transaction counters Tellers working at these trade officesare the face of the bank, thus they should be prepared with high skills of customerservice Service quality for individual and organizational customers are both important,but individual customer service is more essential to the bank since Vietcombank wants

to develop its market share in retail banking sector with the target to become “TheVietnamese number-one bank in retail banking sector” Besides that, number ofindividual customers are much higher than organizational customers for a bank.Therefore, a report by VCB showing increasing number of complaints of individualcustomers in recent time (discussed in part 1.2.1) is a threat for this bank’sdevelopment Thus, this thesis wil focus on analyzing service quality for individualcustomers only, instead of both individual and organizational customers, through twomain symtoms mentioned in this part as following: Increasing customer complaintsand low customer evaluation compaired to competitors

1.2.1 Individual customers’ complaints about VCB customer service at the

counters

In recent years, Vietcombank has focused on developing its market share in retailbanking sector with the target to become “The Vietnamese first ranked bank in retailbanking sector” However, Vietcombank often receives complaints about customerservice quality by individual customers who have experienced customer service at thebank’s transaction counters Being the largest branch of Vietcombank, HCMC branch

is also the branch that receives most complaints from customers

According to figures provided by Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product ManagementDepartment in monthly Customer Service Report, which is sent to all employees byemail, number of complaints about customer service quality at Vietcombank hotline

has always accounted for more than 60% in recent months in 2017, in which HCMCbranch often accounts for the highest percentage (about 20%) since its scale is muchlarger than others The below table shows the sectors of complaints and popularproblems customers are not satisfied with after they experienced service atVietcombank HCMC branch’s counters.

Table 1: Popular problems customers complain about

Vietcombank HCMC branch

Customer service at - Tellers take long time to get the transaction done

- Tellers make errors during making the transactionsVCB transaction

- Low consulting qualitycounters (61%)

- Tellers show bad attitude towards customers

Product problems (card, - Card has not been activated

- Customers' information has not been updatedATM, ) (39%)

- Debit/Credit card is stuck in the ATM

(Source: Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department) It can be seen from the table that 61% of the complaints for service at

Vietcombank HCMC branch is about customer service, including bad service andattitude of employees

Not only receiving lots of complaints at hotline number, it is also recorded thatVietcombank are often complained about bad customer service by individualcustomers on social media Through a survey done in 2016 by BuzzMetrics - a localresearch company in Vietnam, Vietcombank is one of the local commercial banks thatreceived most complaints about customer service quality through discussions andcomments of customers on social networking sites like Facebook and forums, stated byKim1 Service quality of Vietcombank and other state-owned banks are alwaysevaluated to be not as good as services at private banks such as Techcombank,Sacombank, ACB and so on Especially, bad staffs’ attitude towards customers is themost serious problem of Vietcombank’s service quality when it accounts for 21% ofcomments on social media1

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1.2.2 Evaluation of Vietcombank’s customer service quality compared to its

competitors in the banking industry

Planning to enlarge the market share of individual customers, Vietcombank defines

that customer service is one of the key factors that attract individual customers and

keep them stay with the bank as royal customers Acknowledging that individual

customers are not satisfied with service they provide, Vietcombank HCMC branch has

investigated this weakness by comparing customer service quality evaluated by

individual customers between Vietcombank and five other popular commercial banks

including Vietinbank, BIDV, Sacombank, Techcombank and ACB This program was

conducted in July 2017 for all 11 trade offices and Individual Customer Service

Department of Vietcombank HCMC Branches in Vietnam and a number of transaction

counters of other five banks mentioned above A market research company was hired

by Vietcombank to send their staffs playing as secret customers These secret

customers visited all the trade offices of Vietcombank HCMC and one trade office of

each other five banks They played as normal customers and experienced the bank’s

customer service, and then give score to criterias which were listed in advance The

overal evaluation score for the six banks are as follow:

98

97.4 97

96.7

96.4 96

95 94

93.8

92.9 92.9 93

Figure 2: Evaluation of customer service at transaction counters

of six commercial banks

(Source: Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department)

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Figure 2 illustrates result of Vietcombank’s evaluation program, which scored andcompared customer service quality at counters of six commercial banks It isconcerning that Vietcombank has the lowest score of 92,9 over 100 points togetherwith Vietinbank, while the group of private banks have extremely high score,especially Techcombank ranked first in customer service quality with 97,4 points.The evaluation was based on two factors, which are the quality of transaction officesand tellers/officers While Vietcombank’s transaction offices were rated with mediumscore that was in the middle range compared to other banks, Vietcombank’s tellerswere not highly evaluated since the score given was almost the lowest one among sixbanks, as shown in Figure 3 below:

Vietcombank Vietinbank BIDV Sacombank Techcombank ACB

SERVICE PROVIDER (TELLERS) SERVICE ENVIRONMENT

Figure 3: Customers’ evaluation scores for service provider and

service environment of six commercial banks

(Source: Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department) The program evaluated customer service quality of the tellers based on

five main criterias, and the scores for each factor are as following:

Table 2: Result of evaluating quality of service provided

by Vietcombank’s tellers

Criterias to evaluate tellers

Customs

Focusing on working tasks

Attitude towards customers

Professional knowledge and skills

Receiving and dealing with customers’ complaint

timely and responsibly

(Source: Vietcombank’s Retail Banking Product Management Department)

Average Score

90 96 73 82 95

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Attitude towards customers and professional knowledge and skills are the two factorsthat received the lowest scores with 73 and 82 points over 100 points respectively.These are key factors that pulled down the overall score of Vietcombank and made thisbank being ranked lower than competitors in customer service This result can beconsidered as a reconfirmation for the problem of bad customer service quality forindividuals at Vietcombank While Vietcombank has strived to become one of theleading banks in retail banking section in recent years, the fact that its service qualityfor individual customers is not good enough to compare with private banks likeTechcombank, Sacombank, might be a barrier for it to retain royal customers anddevelop market share over its competitors in banking industry.

1.3 Problem analysis

Previous studies of Salim2 found that in order to determine customer’s perceptions ofthe overall banking service quality, banking service product quality plays an importantrole According to Parasuraman et al3, there are ten dimensions in banking servicequality and they are access, communication, competence, courtesy, credibility,reliability, responsiveness, security, understanding and tangibility Access meansavailability for help, ATM access, phone access, email access and account accesswhen abroad Communication refers to clear answers, informing customer of importantinformation, availability of status of transactions Competence means ability to solveproblems and knowledge to answer questions Courtesy is handling complaints in afriendly manner and consistently courteous Credibility means confidence in thebank’s service good reputation Reliability refers to correct service, keeping servicepromise, accurate records and keep promise as advertised Responsiveness refers toprompt service quickly, quick problem solving and convenient service Securityincludes the maintenance of confidentiality Understanding the customers meanspersonalized attention And tangibility is the appearance of physical facilities,equipment, personnel, printed and visual materials

Gronroos4, on another manner, argued that perceived good service quality consists ofsix criteria: professionalism and skills, attitudes and behavior, accessibility andflexibility, reliability and trustworthiness, recovery, reputation and credibility Among

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these criteria, the two criteria professionalism and skills, attitudes and behavior seems to be related to the symptoms of the non-satisfaction of customers aboutVietcombank’s customer service, which was reported by Vietcombank’s RetailBanking Product Management Department as following:

- Tellers take long time to get the transaction done

 Tellers make errors during making the transactions

 Low consulting quality

 Tellers show bad attitude towards customers

From the alternative literatures reviewed, unprofessionalism and low skills ofVietcombank staffs, and negative attitudes and behaviors are considered as potentialproblems that lead to low individual customer service quality at Vietcombank

In order to figure out the actual problems, we will conduct research with in-depthinterviews to validate these potential problems The research will focus on the problem

of low individual customer service of Vietcombank HCMC branch only rather than thewhole system of Vietcombank, since it is hard to do research on the whole system ofthe bank for a large bank with approximately 100 branches like Vietcombank Besidesthat, focusing on smaller scope of research would also allow us to develop moreeffective solutions

In order to identify the problem, the first section of interview was conducted for thegroup of four individual customers who came to different trade offices of VCB HCMCbranches to make transactions These customers are interviewed about their feelingsand comments for Vietcombank’s customer service quality after they visited the bank

to make transactions

Table 3: Demographic of customers chosen for interview

1 Nguyen Hoa 25 Female Individual Customer Service Dept

2 Ha Thi Thuy 37 Female Individual Customer Service Dept

4 Truong Dinh Khoi 40 Male Ton Duc Thang Trade office

From the interviews conducted, there are some key reasons leading to the lowevaluation of Vietcombank’s customer service quality at transaction counters,

including low quality of service space and facility, low interaction quality and lack ofreliability.

1.3.1 Low quality of service space and facility

Service space and facility can be understood as the space where service providinghappens, which includes both interior and exterior of trade offices, transaction countersand other facilities at the trade office Through the interviews, four individualcustomers revealed that there are some problems about the bank’s space and facilitythat they were not satisfied with These customers agreed that if conditions about spaceand facility are improved, they would feel more comfortable and they evaluate thebank to be more professional The most popular problems they mentioned are asfollowing:

 Unappealing transaction space (including both exterior and interior): trash on the floor; sloughing wall; disorderly equipment arrangement;

 Untidy appearance of transaction counter: unorganized documents/trash on thecounter; tellers put their food, drink and things unrelated to work on the counter;

For more details, there is two out of four customers interviewed shared that she wasnot happy with the bank because of the unattractive appearance of the transactionspace:

“I went to Le Thi Rieng trade office to get my cash deposited Outside the front door ofthe bank, there was some trash on the floor and they even put a broom and a mop on theway in Inside the office was also quite messy and unprofessional when they put afolding chair behind the transaction counter, which I guess is used for lunch break.” -

Mr Ba shared in the interview

Mr Khoi, who had made transaction at Ton Duc Thang trade office, also shared that:

“I have a little bit uncomfortable feeling about this trade office because it is quite old.The paint on the wall is sloughing and outside the bank, the sign plate and logo of thebank are faded Not all trade offices of Vietcombank are like that, but I go to this officefrequently because it is located near my work place If the bank’s facility is newer andthe space is more luxurious, I would feel that their service is more professional.”

When asking these four interviewees whether they are satisfied with other service environment factors, Ms Hoa shared that sometimes she was also not glad to see

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messy table behind the counter of the staff Some staffs also put drinks such as coffee

or milk tea on the table, which may make transaction documents get dirty if they arecareless Both of them believe that it is necessary for the bank’s employees to showtheir professional appearance because that is one of the ways to express their respect tocustomers

From the interviews with customers, we can see that each customer have differentproblem to feel unsatisfied with the bank’s low quality of service space and facility,which was described as the problem of “low condition of service environment” in theresearch of Rust et al5 The study indicated that service environment have affection onthe level of customer satisfaction When service environment is in good condition,customers feel more comfortable and they evaluate the bank to be more professional

1.3.2 Low interaction quality

From the interviews with customers, we observe that Vietcombank’s front-line staffsare not highly evaluated about the quality of interaction with customers There aremany complaints about the tellers’ negative attitude and willingness to takeresponsibility Ms Hoa, one of the customers interviewed, shared that:

“I have used service of several local banks, and I am quite disappointed with the attitude

of Vietcombank’s staffs In general, they complete their job, but they did not show thehigh quality of service attitude For example, there were sometimes I met impoliteofficers who did not show any welcome attitude to me She did not smile with meduring the time I sat at her counter waiting for transaction completed Even when I cameand left, she did not say “Hello”, “Goodbye” and “Thank you”.”

Moreover, Mr Khoi who had a bad experience with the tellers at VCB Ton Duc Thangtrade office also shared with us his story:

“When I informed the teller that I could not activate my internet banking account when Iregistered for it for the first time because of the bank’s mistake of sending me thepassword late, her first reaction was to blame the fault to me when saying that the banksystem always send password email immediately She said the reason was that I logged

on the account later than 24 hours as the bank had informed in the email I was reallyangry and asked her to recheck, after that she found out that the fault is due to the banke-system.”

In addition, other interviewees agreed with the opinion that tellers at VCB office arenot as friendly as other banks, especially private banks like Techcombank andSacombank Some of them also shared that sometimes they have to wait for a longtime only for a simple transaction, but the tellers did not explained to them the reasonand also did not informed them the time to wait, thus they feel that they are not fullyrespected by the bank staffs.

Gronroos6 confirmed the importance of interaction in the overall quality of service.Interaction quality can be defined as a customer’s experience as a result of theinteraction with the human element of the service organization, stated by Alexandris et

al6 Gronroos7 explained that service quality consists of two dimensions: functional(process/interaction) and technical (outcomes) dimensions The functional dimensionrefers to customer perceptions of the interactions that take place during servicedelivery, while the technical dimension is what customers receive in the serviceencounter (the outcomes) From this definition, it can be understood that goodinteraction (functional dimensions) between the bank staffs and customers results inhigher customer satisfaction However, the interviews with customers show that theyare not satisfied with interaction quality of Vietcombank’s employees, which isresulted from some symptoms as following:

 Unfriendly attitude of tellers

 Irresponsible feedback for customer’s complaints

 Unwillingness to solve customer’s problem

After examining related literatures, it is demonstrated that all of the symptomsmentioned above refers to the problem of poor customer service behavior (CSB) ofstaffs towards customers

1.3.3 Lack of reliability

From the interview, some customers disclosed that sometimes they felt lack ofreliability with the bank when making their transaction Two out of four interviewedcustomers shared that they have experienced this problem in detail:

“Yesterday I went to Ton Duc Thang trade office to close my bank account andwithdraw money I received my money and thought that the transaction was smoothlycompleted However, this morning, the bank’s staff called me and informed that therewas an amount of money transferred into my account yesterday but due to mistake of

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the bank system, that amount of money was not presented in my account at the time Iclosed it, so today the bank will transfer to me that amount of money From thecustomer’s point of view, I think that kind of mistake makes me feel lack of reliability

on the precise and safety of the bank” - shared by Mr Khoi

Asking Ms Le Vi - Manager of Ton Duc Thang trade office about this occasion, sherevealed that this kind of mistake already happened several times due to the procedure

of transaction system:

“In this case, the money transferred in to the customer’s account after the account isclosed In a logical way, we think that the correct procedure is that after she closes heraccount, money cannot be transferred to that account anymore However, the fact is thebank system only truly closes the account at the end of the day after all the transactionsare done Therefore, there is a gap for mistake when the bank system let the customerwithdraw money and close account already but after that it still received money into thataccount on the same day.” - Ms.Vi said

Ms Hoa, another customer, also complained about the reliability of the Vietcombank’sbanking process when she doubted that this bank has leaked his information for salesmen of real estate She shared that:

“There was a time after I opened a credit card at Vietcombank, I received lots of callsfrom sales men of real estate to offering me their apartments I guess that myinformation at Vietcombank has been leaked out and I am not happy with that.”

These information above demonstrates that to some extent, Vietcombank did not gaincustomers’ total reliability, which is one of the factors affecting customer satisfaction,

as stated by Parasuraman et al8 From the interviews, factors contributing to the reliability of these customers include:

non- Employees of the bank provide error service.

 Employees of the bank did not keep customer’s information confidential.

All the problems complained by customers above would be a result of inefficientinternal process, which was described by Salim2 As mentioned by Gronroos7, servicequality is split into two dimensions: technical quality and functional quality Technicalquality is how the customer receives the outcome of the process, as defined to includeinteraction quality mentioned in section 1.3.2 On the other hand, functional quality ishow the service encounter is taken care and how the service provider functions In this

case of Vietcombank, the problem of inefficient internal process is referred tofunctional quality.

As can be conluded from the interviews with customers, there are three possibleproblems leading to the low evaluation of individual customer service quality: lowcondition of service environment, poor customer service behaviors and inefficientinternal process These potential problems are illustrated in the following is the initialcause-effect map:

Unappealing transaction space

Low quality

Untidy transaction

Unstandardized appearance of employees

Figure 4: Initial cause-effect map 1.4 Problem justification

1.4.1 Possible problems

The purpose of this part is to justify three possible problems which are shown in theinitial cause-effect map (Figure 4), which are low condition of service environment,poor customer service behavior and inefficient internal process

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These posible problems are justified through the second interview section, which wasconducted with a group of four people: a teller and three managers working atIndividual Customer Service Department, Le Thi Rieng and Ton Duc Thang tradeoffices of VCB HCMC branch These in-depth interviews were carried out after theinterviews with customers, which help confirm the problems those customerscomplained in order to have a two-way approach towards the problems.

Table 4: Demographic of staffs chosen for interview

1 Ms Vu Thi Huyen Teller HCM City Branch Individual

is poor customer service behavior

 Low condition of service environment

Service environment was defined and proved to affect the quality of device deliveryand customer satisfaction through many studies in the past According to Rust et al5,service environment of the bank comprises of extrior and interior appearance of thebank facility, and appearance of service provider – in this case, service providers arethe tellers of the bank Lin et al9 devided service environment into two catergories:physical environment and social environment Lin’s definition give a larger meaningfor the term “service environment” while physical environment refers to ambient anddesign factors and social environment refers to the displaying of employees andcustomer climate6

About the influence of service environment on quality of service outcome, Lin et al9mentioned that:

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“Service environment plays an important role in service delivery because environmentcan foster pleasant emotion reactions, while strenthening customer perceptions andretention”.

Ryu et al10 emphasized the influence of physical environment on customer satisfactionthat pleasing physical surroundings (e.g., lighting, decor, layout and employeeappearance) may determine to a large extent the level of customer satisfaction Thestudy also explained that because services are mainly intangible and often require thecustomer to be present during the process, the physical environment can have asignificant impact on perceptions of the overall quality of the service encounter, which

in turn affects customer satisfaction

After examining some prominent problems of service environment recorded by thecustomers, reconfirmation of the problems was made through the interviews withVietcombank’s staffs and managers Firstly, for the occasions of unappealingtransaction space at Le Thi Rieng and Ton Duc Thang trade office, the managers ofthese two trade offices, Mr Binh and Ms Le Vi, admitted the bad condition of facilityand appearance in the present, but it is only temporary situation and they are going tofix it soon Because these offices are quite old, they have planned to repaint the walland replace old and broken facilities in few weeks At this time, they are preparing forthe reparation, thus there might be messy and unorganized appearance of thetransaction space sometimes They acknowledge the downgrade of facilities for years,but because the procedure of getting permission to fix the building took long time to becompleted Therefore, we could not timely replace the old facilities From thecomplaints of customers, they would learn from this experience and attempt not tomake similar mistakes again

Secondly, about the problem of untidy transaction counters, Ms Le Vi - Manager ofTon Duc Thang trade office shared that:

“Sometimes they place too many documents or files on their table, behind the counter, itmight because there are too much customers to serve that day and with the high workload, they do not have enough time to organize their stuffs correctly and tidily As amanager, I understand and do not blame my employees for that However, the customersare right to feel bad about that problem, so I would remind the staffs to attempt to beneat all the time.”

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In general, service environment quality of Vietcombank received some complaintsfrom customers However, through the alternative depth interviews with the customersand bank’s staffs as well as managers, it is concluded that most of those problems aretemporary and they are not the most significant causes that effect customer’sevaluation of Vietcombank service quality.

 Poor customer service behavior

Customer service behavior (CSB) is a field that has been studied by many researchers

in the past and they also proved its importance in affecting the evaluation of customerservice quality of a service organization Weiner11 quoted the definition of CSB fromthe research of Ryan and Ployhart as following:

“CSB is broadly defined as any activities of employees specifically directed towardaffecting service quality (e.g., greeting or assisting customers, rectifying servicefailures).”

According to Weiner11, poor CSB, also understood as negative behavior of employees, isbelieved to be one of the core factors lowering customer satisfaction As defined byMckinney12, the term “employee behavior” refers to the way in which employees respond

to specific circumstances or situations in the workplace Turkay et al13 have mentioned intheir study that employees display appropriate behaviors for a service experience leads tocustomer’s perceive of high service quality of an organization

But why does CSB play an important role for customers to evaluating their satisfaction

of the bank service? Weiner11 has distinguished a service-provided organization and agoods-provided organization by the intangibility of service as contrasted with thetangibility of goods And when the firm provides intangible service, customers willrely more on the service provider’s behavior as an indicator of the quality of theservice they are receiving, as stated by Bowen14 Therefore, CSB plays an importantrole in enhancing evaluation of customer service quality

From the interviews with customers, they are not satisfied with some customer servicebihaviors of Vietcombank’s employees, which include:

 Unfriendly attitude of tellers

 Irresponsible feedback for customer’s complaints

 Unwillingness to solve customer’s problem

When asking Ms Huyen, one of the tellers interviewed, weather she or her colleaguesmake one of the mistakes mentioned above and why, she admitted that sometimes shemakes mistakes like not showing happy and open-armed reception or not saying

“Hello” and “Goodbye” to customers She was just unconsciously doing that and shethinks customers do not really matter about these tiny mistakes The reason issometimes she has to serve a large number of customers in a day, so she feels tired andunconsciously shows unfriendly attitude towards customers

Ms Ha - Manager of Individual Customer Service Department of HCMC branch,admitted the fact that tellers of Vietcombank are not as friendly and polite as tellers ofother banks In addtition, there are several times they show unprofessional behaviors

to customers like irresponsibly feedback to customers’ complaints and unwillingness

to solve customers’ problem

Mr Binh - Manager at Le Thi Rieng trade office - also has opinion about this issue:

“The ratio of old employees in Vietcombank is higher than other private banks At mydepartment, 18 over 50 staffs at my department are over the age of 45, which is arelative high ratio These old officers often show bad attitude/behaviors towardscustomers more than the young generation, because they have that habit from the pastwhen state-owned banks dominated the market and they did not have to provide goodservice to retain customers.”

All of the above interviews have illustrated that poor customer service behavior is themain problem that causes low quality of individual customer service at Vietcombank

It was a serious problem that the bank should investigate to find out the causes andsolutions in order to improve its service quality

 Inefficient internal process

Salim2 defines internal process as a structure, messured set of activities designed toproduce a specific output for a particular customer or market As mentioned by Gronroos7,service quality is split into two dimensions: technical quality and functional quality.Technical quality is how the customer receives the outcome of the process, as defined toinclude interaction quality mentioned in section 1.3.2 On the other hand, functionalquality is how the service encounter is taken care and how the service provider functions

In this case of Vietcombank, the problem of inefficient internal

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process is referred to functional quality, which includes the two problems that

customers blamed about VCB HCM’s service:

 Staff makes errors when providing service

 Lack of confidentiality for customer’s information

About the first problem, the errors customers complained were related to the function

of banking information technology of Vietcombank When asking Ms Ha whetherthere is any reason leading to the inefficiency of the bank’s internal process, shementioned that it might because the technology system of Vietcombank is relativelyold Vietcombank is one of the most long-standing bank in Vietnam, so its technologywas developed before other banks Hence, nowadays this system is older than systems

of banks which were founded later Vietcombank is now in the process of improvingthis system, but it takes several years to complete Therefore, it can be understood thatthis type of cause is objective because the staff cannot control it, as previouslyexplained by Ms Ha

Secondly, about the confidentiality problem, during the interviews with Ms Ha, sheassured that confidentiality of customer’s information is compulsory at Vietcombank.This bank has launched tight rules and regulations customer’s confidentiality andevery staffs that break the rules would definitely receive punishment The leaking out

of information that the customer complained could be a misunderstanding which iscaused by the coincidence of the situation

From the alternative interviews and literatures, it can be concluded that inefficientinternal process is not the main problem that causes low evaluation of customers aboutVietcombank service quality

1.4.2 Main problem

The depth interviews conducted with the bank’s employees and managers hasexplained that most of those problems are temporary and they are not the mostsignificant problems that affect customer’s evaluation of Vietcombank service quality,except the problem of poor customer service behavior All the four customersinterviewed shared their experiences and they were confirmed by the bank’s managersand employees that Vietcombank’s staffs often did not show friendly attitudes towardscustomers, some of them somtimes did not give responsible feedback for customer’s

complaints and were not willing to solve customer’s problem This problem hasexisted for long time but the employees themselves do not acknowledge all the serioussequences of the problem Besides that, the managers know the problem but have notfind the solution to solve it Therefore, it can be concluded that the main problem thatleads to low evaluation of Vietcombank’s individual customer service quality is poorcustomer service behavior of Vietcombank’s staffs.

 Motivating employees: Lack of or inappropriate application of motivational toolssuch as clarifying expectations, goal-setting, providing feedback, recognizing andrewarding positive behaviors are factors that negatively affect CSB

 Design of customer service job: Some studies indicate that job design can

facilitate CSB in the way of empowerment or knowledge enlargement

Based on these potential causes, two in-depth interviews were conducted again with

Ms Vu Thi Van Ha - Manager and Ms Vu Thi Huyen - teller of Individual CustomerService department of Vietcombank HCMC branch with the purpose of figuring outmain cause of the problem

1.5.1 Training

Through the interview, the teller was asked for her point of view on the complaint ofcustomers that Vietcombank staffs were behaving unprofessionally and not showingfriendly and welcome attitude towards customers Ms Huyen - the interviewee - didnot acknowledge that she was lack of the spirit to show her positive and responsibleattitudes/behaviors towards the customers

“I think that it is hard to be happy and smile all day with customers when I am stressedwith my workload I have tried my best to fulfill customers’ requirements.” - said by

Ms Huyen

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Being asked about negative and irresponsible behaviors of some tellers in accessingand solving customers’ problem and feedback to their complaints, Ms Huyen alsoshared:

“I acknowledge that it was unprofessional attitude and behavior of staffs in bankingservice when they do not stand on their customer’s point of view to access the problemand push the fault towards customers Sometimes several colleagues in my departmentmake this type of mistake but I think it is unconscious because they are not truly trainedhow to react correctly to customers’ complaints.”

Further sharing of this teller reviewed that most of the behaviors they presented tocustomers in their customer service job are unconscious and it is because they did nothave enough skills and knowledge about customer service behavior Most of the time,the way they react to problems happening with customer is based on their ownedworking experiences and the culture of their working place

For further understanding about this issue, we ask manager of this department - Ms

Ha - for her opinions When being asked about what the bank managers have done toimprove the attitudes and behaviors of these officers, Ms Ha shared that:

“Vietcombank nowadays has invested more in customer service, but training foremployees about good attitude for customers is still not concerned enough by themanagers.”

For specific, she revealed that there is no official and methodical training course aboutstandardized customer service behavior/attitude for new tellers working in herdepartment New employees learned their job only from experience of the older ones.From the discussions, it is examined that there is a lack of formal training forVietcombank staff on customer service including how to meet customer expectations,increasing assertiveness, dealing with stress and how to maintain good customerservice delivery Weiner11 mentioned the importance of formal training programs thatthey are considered more critical to the success of service organization than otherkinds of organizations and they may presents special challenges compared to entry-level training for other jobs because the content of training is often more interpersonalthan it is technical in nature Salim2 also proved in her study that lack of training foremployees about customer service behavior and attitude would result in lower

1.5.2 Motivation

Motivation plays an important role for promoting good customer service behavior ofemployees since if an employee is not motivated and happy with their work, it would

be hard for them to always show positive attitude to customers

When Ms Huyen was asked whether she felt unmotivated or had other problems intheir job, she said that Vietcombank has appropriate policy to motivate theiremployees She was satisfied with the benefits and regulations of the bank, themanagers are good and take care of their employees’ work life, and they do not want tochange their job in the future Sometimes the work load is over because they have toserve too many customers in peak hours, but they think it is their duty and they wouldtry their best to finish the work In addition, according to Ms Ha - manager ofIndividual Customer Service department, the bank has applied policy and tools tomotivate employees in providing high quality of customer service For example,Vietcombank has just installed the evaluation system at the bank’s transactioncounters, which allows customers to give score for the level of service they areprovided as well as showing their level of satisfaction This evaluation score is thenused for employee appraisal and decide rewards and punishment for the employees.However, this system is just being used from the beginning of 2018, so itseffectiveness in enhancing CSB of Vietcombank needs more time to be verified

1.5.3 Design of customer service job

Some studies have found how characteristics of customer service job affect positivecustomer service behavior of employees Campion et al15 stated that task enlargementappeared to have costs for customer service, based on employee self-reports; however,knowledge enlargement (adding understanding of procedures or rules) led to bettercustomer service, based on employee and manager reports Rogelberg et al16 foundthat job characteristics (e.g., autonomy) accounted for a significant amount of variance

in CSB

As reviewed by Ms Ha, at Vietcombank HCMC branch, customer service staffs areempowered to handle the problem of customer themselves, but they still need to askfor guidance and permission of their managers when the problem is out of theircontrol According to the study of Campion et at15, this results in better customer

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service behavior of employees because they can solve the problem more actively andcustomer does not have to wait for long time to be responded.

In conclusion, through the analyzing of potential causes above and relevant literatures reviewed, it can be examined that the main cause that leads to the problem of poor customer service behavior of Vietcombank’s tellers is lacking of formal training

program about customer service for employees The other two potential causes, which are employee motivation and design of customer service job, are not essential causes because there is no serious problem which can be extracted from the interviews The chart below shows the final cause-effect map of the problem:

(main

reputation

customer feedback for (customer motivation in

satisfaction customer's service work

current

Inappropriate and future