SENIOR managers at NCB Financial Group have come under fire from the financial conglomerate’s Chairman Michael Lee-Chin to improve customer service at the entity in the aftermath of a video last week in which a customer expressed dissatisfaction and encouraged Jamaicans to withdraw money from the bank.

The video, which has since been deleted from social media, was posted by a St Mary businesswoman with the title NCB count your days. It documents her making a purchase amounting to $250,000 in June, that was thought to have been declined, but checks after showed it actually went through. The businesswoman said in the video that she had been trying unsuccessfully since then to have her funds returned, without success, until she made a video about the situation.

“Last Wednesday a video was on social media that went viral, and it was very offensive to what I envisioned NCB to be but it is common to what I have been hearing about customer service at NCB. It’s a big complaint,” Lee-Chin told the Jamaica Observer.

The NCB chairman, who has been on a campaign to change the image of the bank in the eyes of Jamaicans, said what the businesswoman documented “is not what I envision NCB to be, which is a citadel on the hill”.

To help push the new strategy in the company, Lee-Chin said he has set up an EGC Champions group.

“When I talk about E – efficiency improvement, G – governance, and C– customer service, that’s what I am referring to as customer service…

“When I saw that video it caused me some hurt. Immediately after seeing it, at 6 am, I put it in the EGC Champions chat group and I said, ‘Guys, we have to fix this today.’ By 10 am it was fixed and we identified the root cause. By noon I called the lady personally and told her I am sorry that she had to go through what she did because I am genuinely sorry; nobody should go through that,” he continued. “I told her this is not what NCB should be and told her that she was, unfortunately, not wrong and I promised her that we are going to fix it.”

The woman did a follow-up video acknowledging that Lee-Chin did reach out to her personally and that her funds were returned.

“It was a problem going back to June and it was fixed in a few hours. We apologised. We will tackle every single problem like that until we have a standard at NCB that will wow the world,” he continued.

“I have selected 30 high-potential staff members, who are just below middle managers. They are smart and creative, hands-on, energetic, passionate, have high expectations of themselves and the organisation, and they care about people. I am mentoring them because they are the future leaders of NCB. We have a WhatsApp chat group so I am communicating with them on a real time basis. They also now have direct access to the chairman. They are hungry, and they just want to make NCB great.

“…We just have to jump on it immediately because our customers deserve the best and we are going to give them the best. Just trust me and watch. Give me a few months and you will see.”

Turning back to the video, Lee-Chin said when he viewed it, “It put a dagger through my heart because that is not who we are. That’s not a good example for business and for future generations, and we are here to fix it and to ensure our customers feel important because they are most important to us.”

With that issue solved, the Business Observer understands that Lee-Chin met over the weekend with some of the bank’s senior managers and instructed them to do everything to improve customer service in the organisation, after highlighting that he has been receiving a number of complaints about the matter.