BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (May 27, 2016) -- The Development Bank of St. Kitts and Nevis has taken a giant leap in its delivery of services to clients, and more so students living overseas, following the launch on Thursday May 26 of an interactive online Customer Support Portal.
General Manager Mr Lenworth Harris said that with the launch of the Customer Support Portal, the Development Bank had marked a milestone in its outreach effort.
“This is one of the many steps that we will be taking in the near future to try to reach out to our clients and to deal with the other issues they may have and get feedback from them,” said Mr Harris as he launched the Customer Support Portal in the bank’s Conference Room. “That will in turn help us to better service their needs.
“This day really has been prompted by a number of persons, internal and external, and those student clients of us who are residing overseas. I want to commend them for their proactivity in causing us to move even more speedily in putting put this instrument of communication together.”
Saying that it had been a long journey for the Development Bank, Mr Harris pointed out that the launch was done in middle of the celebrations to mark the institution’s 35th anniversary. He thanked the bank’s clients who have over the years given it good support. He also thanked the technicians who had worked tirelessly over the last couple of weeks to ensure the bank launched that essential means of reaching to their clients.
He invited clients to send in their comments and concerns using the portal and promised them that they would get answers within 24 to 48 hours of posting the comments. But as for the live streaming forum, on which he made the announcement, clients would get answers in real time other than when information has to be researched and that answers would be available within 24 hours’ time.
“So I want to welcome you to this launch and to invite you to join us,” said Mr Harris on the live stream. “Send in your comments, your issues, your concerns and we will endeavour to address them either now at this sitting or within 24 hours of this sitting. Also I would say that it is our intention to have regular forums such as this one to reach out and hear from you and for you to advise us as to the way forward.”
The launch attracted a number of overseas clients who posted their questions and comments which were mostly addressed by Mr Harris, while a few were addressed by Mrs Jasmine Irish, the bank’s Credit Risk Management Manager.
Based on the questions and comments raised during the live streaming forum, Mr Harris dwelt at length on the new fees being charged to Development Bank’s debit card holders, and also explained to them how the system of loans on a reducing balance operates to which he advised it was to the advantage of the client if they paid all their loan instalments without fail.
“It is really in our interest as the Development Bank to hear from you, for you to really give us feedback on anything that we do here - anything - and we have a responsibility to accept and respond to your concerns; your queries,” said Mr Harris.
“For a future intervention like this, tell your neighbour, tell your friends, tell those persons who you know they have some dealing or some interest in dealing with the Development Bank that they have this open forum where they will interact with someone from the staff, the importance which we place on this thing.”
The General Manager advised the clients, who are mostly students to send their information to either Mrs Lilescita Percival the Student Loan Monitoring Officer I, and the bank’s Marketing Support Officer Ms Vernitha Maynard. He gave out the email addresses of the two bank officers.
Guests on the Customer Support Portal also took time to thank the Development Bank for having undertaken the great initiative.
“I would like to commend Mr Harris for making himself available through this forum,” said Guest 7886. “It’s good to see persons ‘at the top’ participating.”
Guest 693 had this to say: “I just want (to) commend the bank on this great new feature. I really love it. Who did you guys get to set up this great site for you?”
The Customer Support Portal was developed by home-grown talent at the Port Zante-based Caribbean Commerce, whose Ms Sanal Huggins was on hand to ensure that the launch was executed without a hitch.
“We are a multi businesses organisation integrated into one another in order to provide some forms of services,” said Mr Huggins. “Basically what we did was we created the support website for use by the Development Bank to be able to interact with their customers.”
According to Mr Huggins, to get directly into the Customer Service Portal one has to log into www.skndb.net and alternatively one could still log into the main Development Bank website at www.skndb.com and from there they would still be able to access the portal.
He explained that all videos from live streams on the forum would be automatically uploaded on the Development Bank’s YouTube channel from where they could later be accessed. Videos from other bank activities will also be uploaded on their YouTube channel.
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