Employee attitude towards customers and customer care challenges in banks

Abstract

The article is one in a series that offers a fresh look at the paradigmatic shifts being experienced by the traditional, government supported banking establishments, especially those in the erstwhile socialist and mixed economies, in the newly embraced context of liberalization‐ privatization‐globalization. It attempts to fill a great void in debates that consistently neglected every voice except that of the triumphant customer by giving some room for the managerial viewpoint as well. This mission is undertaken in the context of customer complaints regarding failure in the delivery of banking services. The article makes a case for the delicate aspect of employees' attitudes, their satisfaction and motivation, which are posited as prerequisites for customer satisfaction, which is, again, sine qua non for the competitive sustenance of the organization. It argues that sustainable advantage is possible only through people and any normative proposal to rework the “apprehension” traditionally attached to complaints should begin with a radical shift away from perceiving service production and consumption as isolated systems to an altogether new conception of the product as symbolic of a network relationship defined among the stakeholders and co‐evolved in an environment whose parameters are potentially altered through recurrent inter‐party negotiations involved in the contract. Everything, including the formation of appropriate policies and training for the frontline personnel to cope up with the “irate” customers, should be properly informed from this perspective, it advocates.