Citibank

1) I would recommend an overall rating of “par” for James McGaran. The reasons are as followings:

- The importance of high service quality and customer satisfaction should be considered since it is critical to the long-term success for Citibank whose strategy is to find a niche market and provide good personal customer service and experience. Meanwhile, it can keep the consistency of the bank’s policy by showing management’s attention on the newly introduced non-financial measurements.

- Despite of two quarterly “below-par” for James in his “Customer Satisfaction” scores, there are several concerns in this metric itself: first, the Customer Satisfaction has underlying bias issues. The one-size-fits-all metric cannot effectively evaluate all the branches with very different customer and competitive environments by using the same standard. Given the sophisticated customer base and highly intensive competition in the financial district area, James’s branch faces overwhelming challenges of customer satisfaction. Second, the evaluation process of customer satisfaction is somehow questionable. The customer telephone interview results would arise some adequacy concerns, such as the survey pools, the questions being asked, and the ways to ask the customers. Third, there are some out-of-control factors which should be excluded from the measures, including 24 hour phone banking ATM, which are beyond James’ control. Therefore, we should be more cautious and objective to treat these two “below par”.

- We should also consider the overall effects on other branches managers given the influence of James. In my mind, an overall “par” rating will not hurt the morale of other branch managers who may have conflict opinions if James receives an “above par” rating. Moreover, the “par” rating can also motivate James’ to keeping improving its customer satisfactions in the long term.

An immediate face-to-face talk with James is necessary to explain the management’s dilemma and...