Gulf Coast Bank Case Study

Tami Raznoff

Sladjana Vasic

Robert Herbst

Gulf Coast Bank Case Study

Banking industry is very competitive that is why the Gulf Coast Bank and its Marketing Control Task Force created and implemented the service guarantee program. The leaders of the GCB wanted to gain a competitive advantage and become leaders in customer service. An extensive study was conducted and identified the needs of the target market and analyzed the actions of the competitors. It was decided that in order to stand above the rest a service guarantee should be created and put in place, in hopes that the customers would always be satisfied. GCB has not reach its goal of leading the industry in customer service, therefore it is time to reevaluate the design and the effectiveness of the explicit service guarantees.

The best a firm can hope for is never to invoke a service guarantee; however, in order to achieve that firm must design its processes and operational capabilities to minimize service upsets. The service guarantee program that was initially introduced included three specific guaranties. Checking and savings account statements are guaranteed to be reported as accurate, and if there is a service upset the customer will receive payout of $5.00. Customer will also be rewarded $5.00 if they do not receive answers about home or auto loan within a specified time frame, and finally, the last guarantee strongly relates to customer service stating that a customer who calls will not be transferred, asked to tell their story twice, or made to search for answers themselves. These service guaranties were designed to provide the best customer service; clearly they should be redesigned and improved. Well-designed customer service program includes some sort of incentive for the employees of the Bank. GCB needs some sort of performance measure for each customer service associate. The service upset form needs to be redesigned to include the customer service associates name on the form. This would allow the bank a performance measure for employee incentives and would also allow them to retrain the employees that did not meet the banks standards.

It is very difficult to measuring the success of those service guarantees. The program has been in place for 10 months, implemented in 300 bank branches. Over the ten-month period Gulf Coast Bank has had to pay out $860 due to invoked service guarantees. This is not an incredibly high cost for a major bank to incur. When the figure is broken down it is determined that there were only 172 cases which are 17.2 cases per month and 6% per branch per month. That translates into 0.29 cents per month per branch. This appears to be insignificant problem, and it would be appropriate to conclude that the service guarantee program has been a positive