By Wang Zhi, Liu Chang
Since the opening of Beijing Olympic Games, five temporary offices set up by Bank of China in Olympic Village, Media Village, International Broadcast Center, Main Press Center and Olympic Family have become the frequently-visited places of athletes, officers and media reporters. When covering temporary offices recently, reporters found endless streams of customers. BOC offers perfect services ranging from account opening, currency exchange, deposit, credit card to funds transfer. Foreign clients were deeply impressed by experienced business skills and highly efficient services, and many of them left their signature and words on the guest books to appreciate the passionate service of BOC.
Premium and highly-efficient financial service has all along been a key element of a successful Olympic Game. As the sole banking partner of 2008 Beijing Olympics, BOC has 22,000 staff offering services directly to the Olympics, in which 1,500 serve directly in the arenas. Staff of BOC not only won people's praise by right of high quality services, but also brought a wonderful brand image to people from different countries.
BOC, established in 1912, has become a state-designated specialized foreign exchange bank since the founding of New China. Along with the deepening of financial system reform, especially after the execution of shareholding reform and successful listing, BOC's global force is going up day by day. On July 14, 2004, BOC became the sole banking partner of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, obtaining a wide space for BOC to carry out brand running in virtue of Olympic opportunity.
In financial industry, improvement of service quality is an important part of core competency and is therefore one of the most crucial factor of brand value. In the past four years, with the guidance of "Olympics for Development, Development for Olympics" strategy, BOC fully showed its business strength and service capacity by serving the Olympics, and proceeded with all-level marketing and brand construction by utilizing Olympic marketing platform. It is giving off unprecedented vigor.
Started from the optimization of network layout, BOC stressed on network transformation, carried out functional dividing, improved the office environment, added lower counter, optimized counter business process, and improved customer experience. In the four years, BOC completed reform of 4,276 offices, in which an aggregate of 400 offices were reformed and 80 offices were newly set up in six Olympic cities. 9,000 offices throughout the country could provide foreign currency exchange services, in which 773 offices are located in the six Olympic cities.
BOC installed 2,500 POS machines in the Olympic areas of divisions like Beijing and Qingdao, (including arena, Olympic Family, and Olympic Village, etc.) and realized 100 percent coverage of merchants' acceptance of bank cards. At the same time, BOC designated 37 sub-branch offices to provide "one-to-one" exclusive financial services in the whole 37 Olympic arenas, they installed 26 ATM in the arenas and provided on-site financial services in matching arenas and nominated hotels, including cash withdrawal from ATM, foreign currency exchange, cash collection, storage and escorting, etc.
Banks produce and operate intangible, agile and not-divisible financial products and services. In order to avoid product homogeneity, BOC has been dedicating to reinforcing product marketing and business innovation, and building differential financial products by utilizing the rights and resources of the Olympics.
Each new product of BOC is launched according to different financial demand of customers. The Olympic value-added products, which could satisfy customers' individualized demand, have improved the products attractiveness as well as the business competency of BOC.
Li Lihui, President of BOC, said that "The action of joining in the Olympics, developing local business by using Olympic marketing rights, conducting financial innovation, and improving domestic clients-oriented financial service level is one of important ways for BOC to improve core competency comprehensively and strengthen local competitive advantages".
Staff of BOC practice the tenet of "showing service level of BOC" during the continuous perfection and consolidation, and they targeted at "zero mistake, zero claim". BOC realized bottom-up linkage from headquarter to the branches and it is offering highly efficient and premier financial services for customers throughout the country.
After unremitting efforts, customer satisfaction of BOC is escalating. Looking at the non-periodic customer satisfaction survey conducted by BOC, by accelerating innovative service quality by right of Olympics, customer complaints is decreased obviously while the satisfaction ratio of replies to the complaints is improving year by year.
At the same time, BOC's financial service field to enterprises is expanding continuously. BOC tapped the industry-chain opportunities of Olympics and sought the starting point to enhance services to SMEs. BOC improved service mode, revised the credit policy, and simplified the credit business process to SMEs. BOC has also launched "Kuaifuyi", a new short-term financing product to support the development of innovation- focused SMEs according to their financing needs. The balance of loans to SMEs of BOC was RMB101.744 billion as of the end of 2007, covering loans to companies engaged in transportation, storage, wholesale & retail sales, information transmission, computer services, software, manufacturing, sanitation, and scientific research, etc.
From being an Olympic Torch Relay supplier to being put to the real test against its service level during the Beijing Olympic Games, BOC has obtained an intangible treasure from comprehensive service quality innovation in the Olympics, which results from the affirmation by Beijing Olympic Committee, the athletes, media reporters, and all people who experienced BOC's services.
At present, the direct benefits of BOC from sponsoring Olympics has exceeded the aggregate input it have invested in Olympics. Xiao Gang, Board Chairman of BOC said that "Except for the economic value and brand value, what's more important, BOC acquired service value. Time for Olympic is short, but the service is eternal. BOC will go on innovating service quality with the aid of Olympics. With a history of almost a hundred years, BOC will give off new vigor in future."
