Strategy of Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBK): Customers, Automation, and Self-Service

“We have introduced automation and our self-service platform. In our major branch, there are twelve screens where the customer comes in, dips their civil ID, and then can do everything they need to right on the screen,” says Elham Mahfouz, CEO of Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBK).

“Things are so easy, now. In the beginning, it was not easy because many of our customers were messengers coming from the owner of a company or the owner of a small shop. This messenger had to do all his banking activities on the screen. We had many members of the staff available to help the customers with this process. Now, that customer is knowledgeable and he teaches others who are new. This kind of shift made people worried about whether they might be fired or let go. That did not happen, though. Yes, there were some people let go cause of low performance, and we gave them more than one chance which is typical of any institution. But at the same time, we have taken some of those people into the back office and we are strengthening our backbone in certain operational areas. For instance, our call center is now a contact center and it is now our main form of communication. The call center must have very knowledgeable staff to help customers with tasks such as filling in information for applications to open accounts or helping with loan requirements. Rather than taking two or three days for the approval for the loan process, with the staff’s help it will now be much easier. We also have online services for issuing LCs and LGs. You can fill in the information on the internet and everything can be done for you. We send a messenger to come and get the paper, and all the customer does is sign. Everything is much easier. The year has been focused on retail banking and we are proud of that. We have not done much publicity, but this year our self-service and automation was self-developed by our bank staff. We did not get somebody from outside to help us. The team here worked very hard. Staff from the retail business side and our IT people worked together hand in hand.”