COMMERCIAL BANK OF CEYLON

Q: What are the most significant customer related trends you observe in the sector your company operates in?

A: Across the banking sector, customer expectations continue to shift rapidly towards speed, transparency and digital first engagement. Customers increasingly expect seamless experiences across all channels – branches, mobile apps, call centres and self-service digital touch points. There is strong demand for personalised financial guidance rather than purely transactional support. 

The preference for secure digital payments, biometric authentication, QR code based transactions and self-service tools continues to grow. Customers value consistency and simplicity, expecting banks to integrate services, reduce turnaround times and provide proactive support.

Customer feedback is also more direct and immediate with expectations for full transparency from fees to decision timelines. These trends collectively reinforce customer experience as a core differentiator in our sector.

Q: Hyper personalisation is becoming a necessity. What is your interpretation of this trend?

A: Hyper personalisation is the evolution of customer service from a reactive model to a predictive and intuitive one. It is about using data analytics and AI to understand customer needs even before they are articulated. 

For us, this means developing segment specific journeys; offering personalised promotions; and tailoring financial solutions based on behaviour, life stage and financial patterns. 

Using tools such as CRM insights, journey automation, artificial intelligence powered engagement and advanced segmentation, we’re able to deliver experiences that are more relevant, timely and meaningful. Hyper personalisation is now central to building loyalty and deepening long-term relationships.

Q: Could you share a few recent milestones achieved by your organisation in the realm of customer excellence…

A: Over the past year, Commercial Bank has strengthened its leadership in customer experience through focussed improvements in governance, digital enablement and service culture. A key achievement was the establishment of a robust customer experience governance framework, led by the Customer Experience Steering Committee, ensuring customer centric thinking across all business units. 

Enterprise wide service quality dashboards were introduced to provide real-time performance visibility and support data driven decision making. The bank also established a dedicated Customer Experience Unit, reinforcing its commitment to placing customers at the centre of operations and driving continuous service excellence.

Further elevating our digital leadership, Commercial Bank launched Sri Lanka’s first AI powered SME credit underwriting solution, which is a transformative development for the bank and the SME sector, enabling faster, more accurate and data driven credit decisions.

On the omnichannel front, we redesigned customer journeys, strengthened first time resolution (FTR) at the contact centre, and enhanced integration across physical and digital channels. 

These improvements have accelerated response times, ensured consistent interactions, and fostered a culture of accountability and continuous improvement. End-to-end processes were simplified to reduce turnaround times and improve consistency across touchpoints.

Investments in customer relationship management, automation and analytics have further modernised our technology stack, enabling faster responses and sharper decision making. Service training, and strengthened governance around service standards and complaint resolution, have reinforced a customer first culture across the organisation.

Q: Given the rapid advances in artificial intelligence and tech, how is the modus operandi of customer service changing?

A: These have fundamentally reshaped how we serve customers. Customer service now extends far beyond physical interactions. AI powered chatbots, biometric authentication, digital onboarding and automated underwriting have created faster, safer and more consistent experiences. 

Our contact centre benefits from artificial intelligence driven insights that improve FTR while automation helps us deliver seamless, contactless service journeys. We are building a consolidated digital ecosystem that will bring multiple applications into a single sign-on (SSO) environment – giving customers intuitive, personalised and highly secure banking experiences.

We are shaping the next phase of customer excellence by repositioning the bank to operate as a future ready, insight driven and purpose led institution

Importantly, AI is not replacing people; it’s elevating them. With routine work automated, our teams can focus on deeper conversations, financial coaching and relationship building. The future is a blend of high tech and high touch, offering customers efficiency without losing empathy.

Q: How is Commercial Bank shaping the next phase of customer excellence?

A: We are shaping the next phase of customer excellence by repositioning the bank to operate as a future ready, insight driven and purpose led institution. Our focus is on delivering value that is consistent, predictable and differentiated across all customer segments.

Our first priority is strengthening the enterprise architecture for customer centricity. This includes modernising data and analytics capabilities, building integrated platforms and ensuring that decision intelligence guides product design, risk assessment, service channel strategy and delivery. The goal is to operate with a single, connected view of each customer.

The second priority is driving experience led growth by redesigning key journeys, accelerating digital and self-service adoption, simplifying processes, and transforming branch and relationship models. This ensures customers experience clarity, speed and ease across all touchpoints.

Our third priority is building a scalable service culture by deepening leadership alignment, refining customer focussed key performance indicators (KPIs) within performance management, enhancing capability development and empowering teams to resolve issues end-to-end. 

Excellence becomes sustainable only when it is part of how the organisation thinks, behaves and performs daily.

• Telephone: 2486000
• Email: info@combank.net
• Website: www.combank.lk