DIVE, one of the leading customer service rating and improvement businesses in Central and Eastern Europe, has announced in their yearly survey that Citadele in Latvia and Lithuania is the bank with the best customer service.
Research was undertaken at the end of 2016 using secret shoppers. For the survey, 229 “secret customer” visits were made to banks included in the research. Over the course of the research, using a unified method and identical criteria, the bank branch’s environment, workers’ appearance, professional knowledge, communication abilities, ability to offer customers the most suitable service, and other criteria were measured. In Latvia, with a score of 91.7%, the bank with the best customer service was revealed to be Citadele.
Research in Latvia also evaluated the customer service of Nordea, SEB Bank, PrivatBank, Swedbank, DNB, and Norvik Bank.
As in Latvia, seven banks were evaluated in Lithuania and Citadele came out on top.
The DIVE survey revealed that, among the three Baltic countries, Lithuanian banks can pride themselves on having the best customer service with an average result of 89.5% from a maximum of 100%. In second place were Latvian banks with a customer service rating of 80.5%; the lowest quality of customer service was seen in Estonia with 77.5%.
Citadele manager of the Department of Private Customer Service Baiba Tētiņa acknowledged that Citadele’s standard is to welcome each client as their dearest guest and that the bank is working to ensure that this standard applies to every customer. “We are delighted with the result. The customer is at the centre of everything that we do. We welcome our clients in our branches and call centre with this in mind. We wish to ensure a personal approach for our customers by looking for individual solutions. We are available 24/7 and gladly provide useful advice and support. We are happy about each piece of positive feedback from a customer - we collect them and are inspired by them,” says Baiba Tētiņa.
For several years in a row now, the highest results in Baltic banks have been in survey categories like branch environment, employee appearance, and employee communication abilities. Secret shoppers indicate that they are welcomed into a bank with a genuine smile and politeness, and they highly rate employees’ knowledge of the products. At the same time, they expect a greater interest in offering products suitable to the specific customers’ needs from Baltic banks.
Research was undertaken in Latvia in 12 cities - Rīga, Daugavpils, Liepāja, Valmiera, Ventspils, Sigulda, Saldus, Rēzekne, Ogre, Kuldīga, Dobele and Cēsis. In Lithuania, research was done in 5 cities, and in Estonia - 6.
DIVE TOP3 is a tool for comparing customer service quality which is also used in other fields during research in both the Baltics and Poland.
The Dive Group is one of the leading customer service improvement businesses in Central and Eastern Europe, with many years of experience. DIVE helps its clients to improve their customer service, thereby helping businesses increase their financial and quality ratings. By using a secret shopper method, DIVE evaluates customer service quality mainly in banking, telecommunications, transportation and retail, as well as in the state sector. Research is always undertaken using the secret shopper method. Secret shoppers use a standardised form where longer comments are submitted along with a rating for each question; the comments are used to justify the rating. For each survey an average of 10 leading businesses in the field are chosen, and each is checked 10 times.