By Mark Kawalya
Equity Bank has set up a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week contact center, in order to boost the customer experience for the bank’s more than 1.5 million clients. With the new center, the bank will be able to boost its customer support, a key component of serving the bank’s large customer base.
Highly trained customer relationship staff will be on hand to interface with bank clients using sophisticated technology to document, catalogue, and resolve issues. With a seating capacity of 70 customer relationship officers, the center is set to handle customer concerns using five of Uganda’s most commonly spoken languages. These being English, Luo, Luganda, Runyakitara and Kishwahili, which were given consideration after carefully mapping out the bank’s dominant geographical branch footprint.
Setting up the new contact center is in line with Equity’s strategic objective of morphing into a large retail bank that heavily relies on digital infrastructure for its core operations. Over the last few years, Equity Bank’s client base has grown from 800,000 in 2019, to more than 1.5 million customers, making the bank the fastest growing financial institution in Uganda.
The contact center also chimes with the bank’s digital strategy because it offers excellent online customer service capabilities using voice and social media pathways.
“We have grown in leaps and bounds and are now working to revolutionize our customers’ experiences by creating a culture that focuses on customer service from the onboarding process all the way through to when our customers need interactive assistance. We are building a culture of superior service to address all customer experience pain points, ensure system accessibility, availability, and stability, through digitized operations.” Mr. Samuel Kirubi the bank’s managing director, said.
Clients that were previously unhappy about the long queues in bank branches do not have to visit the bank premises but can reach out to the contact center for assistance. The contact center will not only be a source of convenience for the bank’s clients but will also cut down on the associated costs of accessing its services.
Aside from handling clients’ queries, the contact center will also be a support system for Equi Duuka agents (Equity Banks agent bankers) through a contact line that is solely dedicated to them.
