Supporting customers

Jacek Karas is a Development Manager (DM) at our Polish business, Provident Polska. He's one of many former agents to have become a DM. Here he provides some insights into his role, including the challenges he faces and the pros and cons of being a DM.

"I currently oversee 13 agents who collectively have around 1,000 customers. My mornings tend to involve paperwork and the afternoons visiting customers. I've been working for Provident for four years and before that was an agent for three years. It's a busy job which I enjoy.

"One of the key responsibilities for a DM is to support the constant development of the business-by recruiting new agents, guiding, motivating and encouraging agents, and helping them attract new 'quality' customers. The role is also about maintaining high levels of customer service and making sure standards around ethical conduct and lending responsible are adhered to.

"An important part of being out in the field is visiting customers to obtain feedback on agents. I think customers appreciate us asking.

"I do find the work challenging, especially working in an environment with targets. As a business there is a need to grow the agencies, however, this also needs to be accompanied by a high collection rate. This means, despite the sales pressure, because of the collections pressure, we often need to refuse loan applications if we believe the customer does not have the capacity to repay the loan. Our agents play a critical role in responsible lending-although lending decisions are based on our scoring systems we constantly emphasise the importance of good customer relations and how to conduct sales conversations.

"It's true that consolidating our position as the market leader requires a great deal of flexibility and the ability to adjust to our customers' expectations. These can be quite different-and often, not run of the mill. Sometimes, when our customers run into difficulty, we reach an agreement with them and, for instance, they can pay off smaller amounts in order to regain their financial stability. Doing this doesn't involve any additional fees for those customers opting for the home credit service. This is another way in which we build relationships with customers."