DIGITAL LIBRARY
IMPROVEMENT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE SPECIALIST TRAINING DURING MERGER OF COMMERCIAL BANKS
RISEBA University of Applied Sciences (LATVIA)
About this paper:
Appears in: EDULEARN19 Proceedings
Publication year: 2019
Pages: 2794-2799
ISBN: 978-84-09-12031-4
ISSN: 2340-1117
doi: 10.21125/edulearn.2019.0758
Conference name: 11th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies
Dates: 1-3 July, 2019
Location: Palma, Spain
Abstract:
By putting training as one of its priorities, the company strives for a better future for itself as well as for employees, because the company's existence and development directly depends on the trained staff. Regular training provision allows employees to feel competent, gain knowledge about current industry advances, share experiences with other colleagues. By contrast, without training, employees have to acquire knowledge in practise that can often lead to mistakes, can be time consuming, and most importantly - not provide the customer with the service he expects, and the organization has set as a standard. Research goal is to study the existing customer service specialist training in a commercial bank, to identify its most important shortcomings and to develop proposals for improvement of training for the staff.

Research questions:
How was the pre-merger training happening of the two bank customer service specialists; How employees of the bank and personnel specialists value the training within the organization; What are the main shortcomings in the existing training in the bank; Are there differences in the assessment of the training between employees of both banks; What are the possible improvements in the training of the bank's customer service specialists. Research methods: a survey on learning in organization and interviews developed by the authors.

Main conclusions:
In the early stages of a new organization, it is important to focus on learning needs, so that employees do not lose interest in the work they are doing and are able to acquire the new skills needed in the change process. For employees the most important aspects of training are the content of the training and the training instructor. They also appreciate the opportunity to study at the workplace, however they also support learning from mentors and experience exchange, as it was before the merger. Employees lack professional knowledge and the specifics of the work do not allow long search for answers to questions, so as not to delay customers, therefore it is important that the training includes a broad practical part, which indicates the need for the organization to link study topics with real life situations to create discussion and handling of non-standard cases.
Keywords:
Merger, training, customer service, change, training system.