Bahrain Financing Company (BFC) has appointed consultancy firm Third Wave International (TWI) to undertake a "mystery shopping" programme across its branches over a 12-month period.

The aim of the programme is to identify potential areas for improvement and to further enhance customer service.

The mystery shopper exercise will not only identify training opportunities for individual staff members but will also highlight other areas such as the overall customer experience, the quality of information available and branch experience, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

Once areas for further development have been identified, employees will embark on a tailored training programme that will help them to improve their skills, benefitting them in the short and long term and in some cases leading to promotion.

"TWI has been selected due to its extensive experience with mystery shopper programmes and proven track record of delivering results, for both small and large, local and international clients," BFC general manager Errol Fonseca said.

"The exercise will help us to identify the areas of our business that we can improve on as well as those employees who have the potential to move up the ranks and help our business to grow," he added.

TWI managing director Dilip De S Wijeyeratne said that by leveraging its experience, the company hoped to contribute to BFC's initiatives to further enhance customer service standards.

BFC has also built an in-house training centre which includes a fully operating 'mock' branch in which new employees can train on the job whilst being supervised by a trainee manager.

The company has also created traineeship frameworks that set out baseline knowledge and skills required for a variety of job areas within the organisation.-TradeArabia News Service