Shinhan Bank Named Best
in Customer Service

Bank's effort to upgrade customer service pays off thru 'Wow Calls'and CS Academy

Shinhan Bank won the Grand Prize in the area of Customer Satisfaction Management in recognition of the bank's effort this year to upgrade its customer service in many areas of its operation.
The bank began running the customer satisfaction center in 1994, a first for the Korean banking community under the belief that the bank's competitive power begins with its service power. The bank followed it up with the establishment of the CS Survey System for the analysis of customers'needs and then established the CS Academy and CS Consulting in August 2003 as a way to professionalize its customer service by educating its staff. Those efforts toward improving customer service have paid off for Shinhan, bank officials said.
For this year, the bank decided to make "sensitive customer service"the most important part of its management strategy in order to get closer to its customers and let them know that the bank really cares about them.
The CS Academy has been particularly effective in improving customer service as the academy developed the "service for feeling good"meeting, resulting in an increase in one-on-one consultations between customers and bank staff.
The academy also came up with the "Wow Call Service"in which bank staff phone or send letters to customers to thank them for their visits to the bank, a service strategy that has proven successful. The bank's main idea for customer service is to prevent any inconveniences to customers before they occur. The bank relies on the collection of customer complaints so that the staff is aware of deficiencies and can prevent them from reoccurring.
"Focus,"which is a product of the CS Integration system, has been instrumental in helping bank officers and staff listen to customers'voices so that they can improve their customer services.
Since April last year, the bank's customer services were thought to have been upgraded a notch following the integration of Chohung Bank, as the two banks were able to successfully mix their customer service know-how.
These efforts paid off handsomely in 2006 with the bank winning the customer satisfaction awards based on results of various surveys made by such organizations as the Korea Standards Association, the Korea Productivity Center and the Japanese Productivity Center Consulting.
This year, too, the bank won top place in the customer satisfaction survey compiled by the Financial Supervisory Service, solidifying its position as a leading bank in the area of customer service.
Shinhan Bank will not rest on its laurels, but will continue to sustain its drive to improve customer service as its top priority. "Being the most convenient, advanced and trustworthy bank will continue to be the goal of Shinhan Bank down the road,"a bank official said.
Shinhan Bank CEO Shin Sang-hoon said since the merger with Chohung Bank, which the Shinhan Financial Group acquired in 2004, the new Shinhan Bank has been running along at the pace set forth to meet customer's high expectations, and as a result, the bank succeeded in completing IT and institutional integration, among other aspects of integration, within a relatively short period. Other firm's integrations in the past took much longer to complete.
"In the future, all employees of the bank will strive to do their utmost to deliver customer satisfaction and create customer value, utilizing newly expanded channels and an advanced financial system. At the same time, Shinhan has committed itself to creating a bank at the forefront of socially responsible management, contributing to the creation of society full of hope,"Shin said.
He also said he would like to ask the bank's customers to watch them and applaud their efforts as the new Shinhan Bank matures into a 'World Class Bank,'which serves as a bulwark for the Korean economy.
The new Shihan Bank is the second largest bank in the country, behind Kookmin Bank, in terms of assets, with around 259 trillion won. Shinhan Financial Group, the holding company for Shinhan Bank, is poised to nurture its investment banking business now that the Capital Markets Consolidation Act is ready to come into force in 2009. The new financial law will take down all the walls dividing the financial industry so that a financial firm can simultaneously operate another financial firm in a different sector, such as securities and insurance. nw

President Shin Sang-hoon of Shinhan Bank.