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GRAPEVINE Tito Yuchengco -- Answering Calls and Quality Service Reprinted from the Inquirer By Elena R. Torrijos Change is a challenge Alfonso "Tito" Yuchengco III likes to meet head-on and initiate. The son of former ambassador to Japan Alfonso Yuchengco, Tito has been showing strong leadership capability to take over the reins of the Yuchengco Group of Companies, which includes interests in banking, insurance, property and construction, auto dealership and education. As vice chair of the board of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., the younger Yuchengco has been taking an active role in the bank since three years ago. A graduate of Asian Studies from De La Salle University, he has introduced new concepts and practices that have kept bank personnel on their toes. High-level service Yuchengco's management style is a balance of hands-on attention and people-empowerment. "I'm sort of a hands-on person in the sense I want to make sure things get done. At the same time I also believe in empowering people and making them accountable for their actions because what's the use of hiring people and paying them really high salaries if you can't trust them?" he asserts. Under his prodding, the bank created a new division called service excellence and has hired a new female executive to head it full time. "Her primary responsibility is to ensure excellent service in all aspects," Yuchengco explains. "This girl has full authority to do anything in order to achieve service standards. That division reports directly to me. I thought service quality should be driven from the highest level." Knowing that customer service excellence does not happen overnight, Yuchengco's involvement did not stop there. "One of the things we introduced was answering the telephone up to three rings," he says. He adds that one would be amazed at how difficult it is to teach bank staff to answer the phone promptly as well as properly. "I had my executive assistant call different branches and different departments. She would say, "This is the office of the vice chairman. Who are you and why didn't you answer the phone in three rings?" he recalls. "I sent memos immediately the next day to them, to the supervisors and copy furnished their 201 file. If they answer it properly, it's a commendation." Value circles Another practice Yuchengco has introduced to the bank is the "value circle," a weekly meeting of top bank executives and lower-ranking bank personnel wherein the bank's mission-vision adopted last year is stressed. Yuchengco says he was inspired by the weekly meetings of Capitol Development Bank which RCBC acquired two years ago. "When we acquired Capitol Bank they had these meetings on a weekly basis and apparently it started as a prayer meeting because at one time Capitol Bank was getting held up so often that the owners told them to pray every week. And so after praying they would talk about the things in the bank. So it was there but in a rough way," he recounts. The bank's mission-vision of "absolute excellence" is grounded on five core values including integrity, customer orientation, professionalism, sense of urgency and teamwork. "I find these value circles very useful because I get to stay in touch with people who are really in contact with clients," Yuchengco says. "For me it's a way of really hearing in spectrum the people who are involved in the day-to-day activities of the bank because when you hear it from senior management it's different. It gets filtered through and by the time it gets to you, it has gone through four to five different people." Yuchengco, who started his career as an account officer in RCBC for two and a half years before being rotated to the other Yuchengco companies, has been promoting the sense of urgency in the bank. He lobbied for a rule wherein all bank employees must always reply to queries, requests, letters within three days. "If you get a memo, a letter, a request or anything, you should reply within three days even if your reply is I need seven more days. At least get back to the source that you've attended to it," Yuchengco says. "Before that you wouldn't get any reply for weeks and you didn't know whether the person was working on it or not." New programs Yuchengco says he has also more changes in mind for the bank such as an aggressive marketing strategy to promote the group's range of auto, insurance, property and banking products. He says he has always enjoyed business development and starting new ventures. Right now he is also involved in upgrading the group's new acquisition, Mapua Institute of Technology, into a school that will equip graduates with the skills and knowledge to lead the country into the new economy. He is exploring tie-ups with Stanford University and Georgia Tech in this regard in order to raise the educational standard of the institution and facilitate MIT students' entry into the information technology fields. It seems in all aspects, Yuchengco has provided new ideas and leadership that pushes the envelope of excellence.

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