Ethical Communication in a Retail Banking Call Center Sales Position
Jacklyn Martin
Currently many banks are viewed as being sales driven and sometimes forget about providing quality customer service. Because of this many customers are looking to do their everyday banking transactions through electronic options instead of the traditional face to face interactions. This change in business is alerting banking institutions that they should utilize call center salespersons more. Call centers are said to increase in the next few years. This shift helps to ensure the employees are using ethics in current practices. A good way to make sure the salespersons are using ethical behaviors is to record all calls inbound and
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It is further revealed that most individuals have a mixture of both customer and sales orientated behaviors (Hansen, 2016). The latter is one of the reasons it makes sense for retail banks to shift to call centers.
If the customer feels trust that they are being treating ethically than it is easier to build a long-term relationship with them (Bateman, 2015). Not only does providing quality customer service help to retain existing customers for longer periods of time, but it improves the company’s image as well. The customer’s perception of how they were treated by a salesperson is related to the way they view the company. Successful call centers can build relationships with customers while helping to keep the brand image positive (Blignaut, 2014).
A positive image can be achieved by a bank’s decision to perform ethically to provide the best service to customers. For banks to successfully achieve the change to ethical behavior, they must incorporate a more responsible attitude when lending. The focus has shifted from how to fix a problem to how to stop the problem from occurring in the first place (Paulet, 2015).
Another skill that is important for a call center salesperson to have is ability to use the right emotions while providing quality customer service (Blignaut, 2014). A sales individual
The customer service personnel should be in a position to acknowledge their clients and pay attention well to whatever they say and put into practice active listening. They should also give a chance to the customers to respond to the services the company offers perhaps through the enterprise’s website. For any company to prosper, good customer relation is paramount in building a loyal
Customer service is a term which means a measure of how well products and services meet or exceed the customer's expectations. It is important to have this within a business as it creates a good relationship with the client and you gain their trust, It increase customer life time value and retains customers to stay with your company and have repeat sales. Having good customer service will also reduce negative feedback such as bad words getting around about the company.
Customer service is the most important aspect of any business. Without an adequate relationship with its consumer base, a company is at an enormous disadvantage.
Customer service must satisfy the needs of the customers to ensure a service companies’ quality is maintained.
Bank of America is one of the largest banks in the nation. It is a multinational company and it is recognized by its high revenue value. Unfortunately, Bank of America has endured many complaints and harsh views regarding their lack of ethics. Ethical issues occur when there is a blatant disregard to implement integrity, trust, and responsibility. In some financial institutions, ethical matters are displayed in the way the consumers are treated. Within the past nine years, Bank of America has diminished all of their ethical promises by revealing customer information without their permission; discriminating against consumers based on their race; and manipulating overdraft fees in order to benefit the bank. In order to assess these problems, it is vital to recognize what Bank of America claims to stand for and determine where their most concerning issues are generated from.
Banks also involved in international banking through the foreign exchange market. By trading in these markets banks often can reduce their risk. So wells Fargo bank can reduce their risk by involving in this trading. The Lack of control in management are the main responsible of these kind unethical acts. Wells Fargo should take a useful action against their employees, not only firing them, but also control and giving well training about the customer service and above all banking. They should train professionally, which means besides the business employees should take decision ethically. Because “a business mindset leads to dishonesty and lack of consideration for other things like moral issues”
Furthermore, Wells Fargo has been exposed to unethical behavior inside the organization. Wells Fargo employees opened 3.5 million of false accounts, including credit cards that were issued without the customer's consent. The employees were involved in unethical behavior, due to the cross-selling strategies that management put in place. Lower level employees were required to reach their quotas for their individual goals, as well as the bank to reach their goals. These goals were unattainable, which created a sense of pressure among employees as well as the absence of trust in the corporate culture. Timothy Sloan the new CEO of Wells Fargo is working very hard at gaining trust among their employees, hiring new managers as well as employees that can create and keep a healthy environment within the organization. Wells Fargo is paying out millions in refunds to consumers that were affected by these phony scandals. Consumers don’t think the refunds are enough, because of Wells Fargo lacks leadership throughout the organization, which created unethical behavior among their employees. Wells Fargo needs to earn American trust after the sales culture scandals that
Maintaining ethical principles in the corporate environment is essential to the success of any business entity. As such, managers need to ensure their companies are run professionally with regard to the fundamental ethical principles. In the article, “Clinton promises to hold Wells Fargo accountable,” Amanda Becker gives an overview of Hillary Clinton’s efforts to sue Wells Fargo for accounting fraud. The article explains how the company’s employees acted unethically when they opened multiple bank accounts to enhance the company’s sales (Becker, 2016). This action defiles the fundamental principles of corporate ethics. This article is thereby in line with this week’s readings as it highlights the importance of ethics in the corporate entity.
A business is created to make money, it may originally be made to help people, but in the end the pocket book of stockholders and owners is what managers focus on, and what employees are hired to do for the company. This means to do whatever it takes to make money, however, you need to stay with in the law and in many cases be socially ethical in business practices. When you fall out of these boundaries you will find yourself on the front page with your stocks dropping and a loss of profits you have been trying to increase. It is understandable that social ethics is not a companies sole priority, however, when you forget you have a
The management at wells Fargo relied on compliance as a strategy for managing its ethics (YouTube, 2018). The management set standards that employees were expected to meet. For instance one employee reports that in the line of work she realized that she was unable to meet the set goal. She decided to call the banks ethics hotline to explain to the management that there was no ethical way of making such huge sales (Cowley, 2018). The management at Wells Fargo was using the low-level employees to open accounts without informing the customers (YouTube, 2018). Although the management says that these was not the company’s culture as reported by the employees. The same workers who were engaging in opening more accounts were working in the same roof
The observational study shows that there are some factors that lead to ethical misconduct within the company. First, working in financial services company tends to be challenging for the employees. This makes the employees feel like being in a competitive environments that make them struggling to be more successful and do anything to be the best. Consequently, people are more likely forget about ethical behavior and undervalue code of conduct. However, business knows the importance of integrity and how it makes difference in
Customer loyalty is much harder to obtain that customer service satisfaction. The most important first step is to satisfy the customer by meeting their expectations. Customers only give a company one chance and if they aren’t satisfied they will not do business with that company again, as well as tell others of their experience. The next step would be to exceed the customer’s expectations. If a business goes above and beyond to assist the customer they begin to build loyalty. The next step is to truly surprise the customer. In order to dominate the marketplace the company must find a way to make them selves stand out with their product or service, accompanied with phenomenal customer service. Once this has been done customer satisfaction and loyalty will be gained. “Acquiring a new customer can cost four or five times more than keeping a current customer” (Bestmark, 2013). So it’s essential to keep the current customer’s happy and coming back for more.
People: While more and more of our banking takes place electronically, customer service is still important when we experience problems or need help with some aspect of our banking.
Why does this happen? Why don’t salesmen just record what they have actually done instead of doctoring books or changing orders? For one a lot of pressure is put on salesmen. Foremost among the firm's agents who manage the economic and ethical boundaries with the firm's customers are its salespeople. Most firms selling to organizational customers and many firms selling "big ticket" consumer products rely on their sales force to connect to the customer and the market. In such cases, the salesperson represents the firm to most, if not all, of its downstream stakeholders: customers, channel members, and even competitors. As the primary boundary spanner between the firm and its customers, the salesperson faces a constant barrage of decision-making about ethical issues. (Meyer, Charlene, 2003) A lot of pressure is put on sales people. They have
Communication is constant, especially in the information age. Savvy professionals know how to communicate quickly, effectively and ethically. The term "ethical communication" has different meanings depending on the context. A shampoo advertiser and a sports team spokesperson may have dissimilar views on what constitutes as ethical communication. Some communication guidelines are only applicable to certain situations, while others could be understood as ethical in one situation and unethical in another. Every aspect of ethical communication should be considered within the boundaries of the issue at hand.