The National Commercial Bank (NCB) has shown commendable corporate empathy over its systems problems which caused salary delays and other grief for thousands of its customers over the weekend.

We would probably have been more full-throated in our commendation had the bank gone a step further to explain the cause of such a massive breakdown in the system that has bedevilled it since May 17, 2019.

Of a truth, whenever things go wrong, our business culture is to resort to the usual ‘we are sorry’, instead of a full and complete explanation that helps customers to have a deeper understanding and confidence that the company had done all it could to prevent the problem or to rectify it in a timely manner.

It will clearly take time for a change in that culture to one in which businesses will develop the courage to take their clientèle into their confidence. That approach might have spared NCB the ire of so many of its customers who were put to such great inconvenience.

Naturally, it is conceivable that the bank itself has not yet come to terms with the magnitude of the systems breakdown. We hope that it was not related to the notice it sent out warning that: “We are aware that some customers may have received fraudulent e-mails with a link to a website that looks just like ours.”

The bank confidently announced that regular opening hours would resume on Monday (yesterday). Up to that time, no mention was made that salary services would be affected, suggesting that NCB was itself unaware of that eventuality.

The sooner the bank is clear on what happened, the sooner it can assure customers that there is no likelihood of a recurrence. Otherwise many will continue to fret about the integrity of its systems.

Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that NCB and its president and group CEO Patrick Hylton — short of that full explanation — have tried to make up for the grief it has caused by taking several measures that helped to soften the blow.

In the lead-up to May 17, the bank consistently notified that it would begin the first phase of its core system upgrade and that there would be certain service interruptions, including online and mobile app services, wire transfers, and bill payments, among others.

Once the problem was discovered, however, the bank hit full throttle in seeking to respond to the concerns of customers, including Mr Hylton’s appearance on the front line. We make a point of this because too often the reaction of leadership is to run and hide, leaving lower-level managers to face the music.

It is encouraging to hear that up to Sunday, 95 per cent of salary files received by end of day May 24 had been processed and that those received after were expected to be in customers’ accounts by yesterday.

In addition, the bank has extended its closing hours from the usual 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm over yesterday and today and says it will not charge fees for late payment on NCB loan and credit card facilities related to the delay in salary receipt.

Importantly, NCB has committed to reimburse customers for late fees from utility companies or other non-NCB loan and credit card facilities.

We hope that NCB will quickly resolve these systemic problems that are not always avoidable and that it will have learnt useful lessons from this awful episode.