The School of Banking and Management (SBM) at the Osei Tutu II Centre for Executive Education and Research (OTCEER) in Kumasi have delivered an intensive and insightful two-day weekend programme in customer service excellence to 46 bankers in the Ashanti Region.
The participants, drawn from five rural banks in five districts in the region, occupy various customer service positions, including financial extension executives, sales executives, mobile bankers and supervisors.
With almost 600 bank and non-bank financial institutions in the country, competition for customers has come at the expense of good �customer service, which is, albeit, a major differentiating factor.
At the end of the training programme last week, it came to light that the Ashanti Region alone had 20 per cent of the 138 rural banks from the 10 regions in Ghana.
Until the establishment of the SBM at OTCEER, there was no dedicated institution offering practical learning and development facilities for bankers and managers outside the national capital, Accra.
SBM at OTCEER, thus, fills a yawning gap for the holistic development of the financial services sector of the economy.
Nana Otuo Acheampong, Head, OTCEER, and adjunct faculty member of OTCEER, and Mr. Raymond Abaifah, Principal Consultant at Mindset Consultancy, were the resource persons.
Nana Acheampong said, �the participants came in with various challenges militating against their customer service schedule, including the difficulties in retaining customers they had won, while many also required the soft tools in dealing with difficult and irritating customers�.
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