In this article, you’ll learn how a mobile learning application enabled a new bank to improve the quality of customer interactions. The mobile learning service provider dug down deep into identifying the problem faced by the bank and figured out ways to curb the training challenges.
Before we learn, the intricacies on how our Mobile Learning Platform a discovered and resolved a solution to help banks improvise their interaction with the customers. Let us get a generic understanding about Microfinance and banks in India.
Before we learn, the intricacies on how our Mobile Learning Platform a discovered and resolved a solution to help banks improvise their interaction with the customers. Let us get a generic understanding about Microfinance and banks in India.
India is the largest microfinance market in the world (no pun intended). Though microfinance in India is restricted to simple, unsophisticated lending products, the sector has flourished by lending to hundreds of millions of unbanked, unserved and underserved citizens across different metro cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and more. It was, therefore, not surprising that, when RBI approved 10 India’s first small finance banks, it was not surprising that eight were microfinance institutions.
The Transition from MFI to Bank
Low-income borrowers, the traditional customer base of microfinance companies could only get one limited-size loan product. Small finance bank could offer its customers a wider range of products and services like remittances, insurance, or home or vehicle loans etc.
As a bank with a presence at high footfall locations, it attracts a wide array of customers, who are increasingly more knowledgeable and demanding. This is unlike microfinance companies that usually works with the community in their neighbourhood.
With exposure to varied customers, wider product portfolio and the need to comply with statutory requirement, one of the main challenges for the new bank was to enhance the overall knowledge and skill levels of people. Most importantly their branch teams to manage customer interactions well and keep the CSat scores high.
The Problem
The bank had a strong and active L&D team management decided to focus on building capabilities of customer-facing teams operating from 100+ branches across the country. They knew about the problems which had to be addressed immediately – major ones listed below:
- Other than the 10 days of formal induction at Regional Training centres, most job-related training is done by the trainers travelling to branches occasionally or by managers. But it was not adequate or uniform.
- The existing learning management system was web-based and demanded continuous internet connectivity. Further, a large percentage of the staff were feet-on-street, making it inconvenient and less useful for them.
- While the LMS did have a mobile app interface, the user experience was unsatisfactory, as, it was a complete rendition of the Web LMS and not a mobile learning-based training application. The Mobile Learning App also did not work offline.
- LMS was used for mandatory compliance training and not for job-based learning.
The bank was looking for a new age platform with an intuitive mobile learning interface for its branch teams comprising 80% desk-less staff, along with support for SCORM based training, to ensure existing content didn’t end up being redundant.
The Process
After a stringent evaluation of 10 probable vendors offering mobile app based training solutions, Handy Train was eventually selected. One of the most important tasks which were part of the final evaluation was to visit the bank’s branches, listen to the voice of the Customers: understand concerns, identify expectations and highlight opportunities, all of which could be addressed from a single platform. Here are our findings based on inputs from at least 75 staff members from 7 bank branches.
The Findings
Despite having an e-learning platform, most feet-on-street and frontline staff were not exposed to the platform. Other than the classroom training, they did not have any training tools. Some of the other learnings were:
- Bank has a 10-day long induction program for new joinees conducted at respective Regional Offices. However, once the staff go back to their respective work locations, there is no way to reinforce the learning.
- Retaining classroom learnings is difficult and leads to a lot of errors on the field – this increases the work of the operations team.
- Staff preferred to learn in their native language, as not all were conversant with English.
- Staff had to share common laptops at the training center. This leads to loss of productive work time or spending late hours in the office.
- A lot of queries come in form the frontline staff during their customer visits (on-field). However, it was impossible for Branch Managers and senior team members to be available at all times to address these queries. This leads to form filling errors, miscommunication and eventually repeat visits to the customer.
- On-field staff and Operations team struggle due to lack of refresher training, and non-availability of immediate access to training material.
- Managers are unable to give time for training sessions as it would pull them away from their core responsibilities.
