Customer service is our hallmark - BOND CEO
Bond Savings and Loans was recently welcomed into the Ghana Club 100 which is an indication of its good performance. Our Editor, Theophilus Yartey had a conversation with the CEO of BOND regarding the company’s membership of Club 100 and other issues relating to the company’s critical success factors.
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Below are excerpts of the interview.
GB: Congratulations for your membership to the Ghana Club 100. What are the critical success factors to the achievement of this feat?
Thank you very much. We are really honoured to be part of this very prestigious group, among the high flyers of Ghanaian businesses both local and multinational. This is one of the most credible endorsements one can get as far as credibility in business is concerned. It shows our consistency in performance and also shows that we are doing the right things and therefore the banking public can rely on us and we have all our stakeholders to thank for it. Our customers, Board of directors, management and staff. We are indeed very grateful.
The critical success factors to the achievement of this feat have been the people, service and quality. The order of these critical success factors is very much deliberate since one leads to the other.
Of course, if all these three are done properly it eventually leads to high performance both financial and operational and then to growth. By people we mean our customers. We place them at the centre of everything and all that we do. We consider them partners in our business just as they consider us as partners in their businesses. We are therefore willing to go the extra mile to ensure their businesses are thriving and they in turn are delighted with our services.
At BOND, service is always overemphasised because that is what we offer. Quality service for that matter is our hallmark. I am happy to mention that we have had very positive reviews by some customer service consulting groups in time past.
Finally, we ensure that we are not only offering service, but we insist on the quality of whatever service we offer to our customers. These critical success factors are what eventually led to the excellent financial and operational performance and has propelled our growth to this level.
GB: Did the achievement of this feat come as a surprise to you?
We have focused and continue to direct our activities on delighting our customers and doing the right things. We have a great sense of responsibility towards our clients and our foremost priority is to deliver our core banking operations responsibly and as efficiently as possible all of which is geared towards achieving a sustained value.
We believed that if we delivered well on this promise, it will eventually lead to achievements such as these. So the achievement of this feat did not come as a surprise to us at all because we have deliberately engaged in activities that will lead to such accomplishments.
GB: BOND has become a household name. Going forward, what will be the key drivers in maintaining the company's position and possibly improve upon the feat?
We are happy about what we have achieved as a company; however we have not attained our satisfaction level as yet. We want to go beyond what we have already achieved and even attain more.
I always emphasise this anytime I have the opportunity to speak to my people. Whatever we have achieved already is history and only fit for the history books. The history is the basis for our future achievements. So the focus really is on the years ahead.
We will continue to insist on people, service and quality as a company and aim at offering the best of services to our customers. We will not compromise on offering utmost convenience to our customers.
Technology has come in handy as far as offering banking services is concerned. It is revolutionalising the way business is done. It has become a key driver of business activity in recent times.
How well we embrace technology will be key to our performance going forward and we have not lost sight of this fact at all. We continue to invest and commit substantial resources into technology because we believe it is the way to improve on our performance going forward.
GB: Is your company on track as far as meeting your financial and operational targets for the year?
The environment continues to offer tremendous challenges especially to financial institutions. We are still experiencing some spillover effects of the economic challenges we have suffered the past few years. Despite these challenges, we are quite confident that we will meet our targets for the year. We are constantly strategizing and re-strategizing to ensure that we stay on course.
GB: What's on the drawing board as far as opening of new branches, launching of new products and services are concerned? What do you have for the market?
The market should watch out for BOND. We have a lot in the offing as far as products and services are concerned. We are developing products and concepts that will delight our customers and offer them the best of services and convenience. BOND will be actively involved in the electronic product business.
We also are developing a different approach to expanding our reach. We are quite advanced in plans regarding access by our customers and the market we believe will be pleasantly surprised.