Ecobank Ghana has embarked on an exercise where top executives of the bank left the comfort of their offices and went to the banking halls to take over the duties of front line staff of the bank.

This is the second time the bank is undertaking this unparalleled Ecobank Group initiative, dubbed “Ecobank Guest Tellering” in two years.

Under this year’s Guess Tellering initiative, all top executives of the bank moved round the various branches of the bank in Accra and worked as Tellers and Customer Service staff, meeting and serving customers first hand.

Executive Director of Corporate Banking at Ecobank, Rosemary Yeboah was at the Ring Road branch of the bank in Accra, where she worked as a Teller, assisting customers to make deposits and to cash cheques, and also worked at the customer service desk where she met two people with complaints about corporate banking services, which is her baby.

One male customer, who noticed Rosemary Yeboah was the Head of Corporate Banking, poured his lingering frustration with the banks slow pace in transferring money for him to make payments for his imports.

The man, who said he had been saving with the bank for ten years, complained that he had made several requests and even threatened legal action at some point but his relationship manager could not help him get expeditious service.

Rosemary Yeboah took the details of that customer and promised to personally take the matter up and ensure he got better service.

Later on, in an interview with journalists, she noted that the fact that the customer had been with the bank for ten years was a sign he is satisfied with the services he was getting from the bank, but he may not be aware of certain policy changes in the banking sector, and that may account for his frustration.

She noted that the feedback she got from that customer would definitely inform either a new policy decision, or a new product or service  to assist customers with similar challenges.

“But customers with such challenges can always speak with their branch manager if the relationship much is unable to help,” she said.

Rosemary Yehoah said trade support is one of the strongest points of Ecobank and a lot of the bank’s trade support products are designed to help small businesses “so I am not taking the customer’s complaints for granted at all. We will work on the issues he raised to their logical conclusion and develop products and systems to deal with such issues more effectively.”

She also noted that for customers who need money to make payments for good outside Ghana, Ecobank leverages on presence in over 33 countries to provide support cross-border traders to make payments through the use of Ecobank's unparalleled Cross-Border Electronic Payment Cards..

“We also have advisory services for traders regarding the documentation needed to make them get smoother and better service from Ecobank,” he said.

 

ATM Fees

Ecobank has recently been fingered for charging customers of other banks who use Ecobank ATMs GHC5. Pundits say Ecobank is discouraging financial inclusion instead of collaborating with the other banks to ensure every banked person in Ghana got affordable access to ATMs in Ghana.

But Rosemary Yeboah said it took a great deal of investment for Ecobank to spread ATMs across the country to serve Ecobank customers wherever they are, so other banks also have the responsibility to spread ATMs to where their customers are.

She said Ecobank encourages financial inclusions by investing in the spread its presence and services across the country, and is also working with other banks to reach the unbanked in many other ways “but Ghanaians need to understand that we made huge investments into the ATM so non-customers must pay for the service.”

The Ecobank Corporate Banking Executive Director however assured that Ecobank is committed to finding ways of collaborating with other banks to provide more affordable access to ATMs for all banked people in Ghana.

Rosemary Yeboah and Linda Morrison, Ring Road Branch Manager listening to the customer complain about his frustration with slow place of money transfer