Customer Service in 7 steps

It is a well-known fact that no business can exist without customers.  In the business of Stock Broking, it becomes essential to work closely with customers to make sure that the systems you create, processes you establish and the service personnel you employ for your customers are aptly equipped to handle their expectations and requirements.  This is quite unlike other business relationships.  This makes customer service the single most important factor and the only differentiator in the industry.
We at Kotak Securities believe that Prompt response is perhaps the biggest perception setter.  It might sound basic but some statistics (available through Google) claim that over 90% businesses still don’t get the first rule of good customer service right.  For us therefore, the first rule of good customer service is to always answer our emails, calls or other messages as quickly as we can.
The other basic that is widely ignored in our Indian context is to speak the language of the customer, literally.  Most broking houses believe that English and Hindi are the languages of choice for stock broking customers  but if you explore deeper in the cities, towns and states across India you would realise that English and Hindi can be managed, if needed, but these are certainly not the language of choice.  Kotak Securities talks to its customers in 10 different languages, you pick what you are most comfortable with and we’ll find a way to listen and communicate with you.
Stock broking is a tricky business, the customers get lured to make more return for their investments and it gets trickier when the customers are senior citizens and choose to invest their life savings in stock market.  We are extremely sensitive to this aspect and therefore as a rule if any senior citizen opens an account with us, we call them and explain the risk factors.  We explain about F&O trading, cash trading and the associated risks involved with each segment.
In today’s time, just having strong technology platform alone is not sufficient to serve the customer well, it’s imperative to proactively identify the need of customers and act upon it.  A simple step like recognising the need of customers to have financial statements available to them before filing tax is of critical nature.  Many organisations wait for customers to call at the contact centre so that the same is given when the customer is in need.  A simple step like proactively sending SMS’s asking for request can go a long distance.  Our recent initiative fetched requests from over 5000 customers even without the customer having to call us.
The organisation also invests heavily on providing the best in class technology to its customers.  Tools like Mobile Stock Trader helps you trade in a jiffy and allow you to keep a tab of your scripts even when you are not in front of your computer.  Our Self Service Kiosk at the branches which is first of its kind in the business, lets you print your statements, deposit cheque, do fund transfer or have a video call with our centralized service unit, all from this one machine.
Transparency too rates high in our scheme of things and how we choose to do business.  We make sure that an SMS is delivered to customer on every trade executed on their account, the contact centre and branches are always ready to help customers in understanding their ledger and accounts or goes to the extent of reconciling customers account if there’s a need.  There’s nothing more important than the trust of our loyal customers.
Over the years the organisation has recruited people from all walks of life, trained them and made them ready to serve our customers.  The organisation provides opportunity to house wives by offering part time employment, it not only makes them self dependent but adds to their knowledge of the market/ business.  Kotak Securities recently launched a huge customer contact centre in Ahmedabad thereby creating job opportunities; it’s our way of saying thanks to a city that has given us so much.
In a typical traditional Indian way, the essentials of outstanding customer service comes down to what our mothers always told us i.e. “keep your word”, “play nice”, “be fair”, say “thank you”, “answer me when I talk to you” and “have respect for your elders”.  We believe that by following these instructions what we are today and as we know it, these deep rooted instructions stay with us through our lives.