Citibank Performance Evaluation: Branch Manager Feedback

Performance Ratings Overview

The following ratings summarize the branch manager's performance across Citibank's standard evaluation categories:

Financial: Above Par
Strategy Implementation: Above Par
Customer Satisfaction: Below Par
Control: Par
People: Above Par
Standards: Above Par
Overall Evaluation: Above Par

Feedback Approach and Structure

The overall approach to delivering feedback should be honest. This is an adult-to-adult conversation, and it should be treated as a management issue rather than a human resources issue. Optimizing the customer service score, for example, may not be the best way to run the branch, and the feedback should reflect that nuance.

The recommended approach is to walk through each category on the evaluation form one by one, giving roughly equal time to each. This structured sequence should be applied consistently across all managers. After the structured portion, the discussion should become unstructured, because that is where the most productive exchange of ideas occurs. Because performance feedback is most effective when it invites dialogue, the unstructured portion is essential — not optional.

Customer Satisfaction: The Below Par Rating

Because customer satisfaction is the only Below Par rating, it will receive special attention. The manager being evaluated likely understands why improving customer service scores matters, but it is worth reviewing the strategic rationale explicitly. Customer service is linked not only to corporate priorities but also to a specific function within Citibank's broader strategy.

The branch performs well financially because the manager is effective and because the client base includes a large number of wealthy individuals. It is those high-net-worth clients who drive the branch's financial results. Competition for those customers, however, is intense. Strategically, the key to sustainable success at this branch is maintaining strong customer service scores — especially among the wealthiest clients.

At the same time, the manager will want to understand the data more deeply. The "Below Par" rating reflects an average score that fell below the threshold, but there is considerable variability in the underlying scores. That volatility needs to be acknowledged. If the goal is improvement, the manager needs meaningful, granular information — not just a summary letter grade.

The bottom line is that the measurement methodology is weak and not aligned with the strategic reality of this branch. This is one reason the overall evaluation remains "Above Par." A survey of 25 randomly selected customers makes little sense for a branch where the top 10 percent of clients is driving the majority of revenue and profit. Moreover, those clients are typically the busiest people — and therefore the least likely to respond to a telephone survey, assuming a caller can even get past their assistants.

In the absence of better data, the customer service scores may actually reflect a rational trade-off: delivering exceptional service to high-net-worth clients, potentially at the expense of lower-value clients. If that trade-off is being made deliberately, it needs to surface in the discussion. While all branches have some percentage of clients driving a disproportionate share of revenue, this branch is likely an extreme case. The appropriate benchmark is not the average Citibank branch — it is branches with equivalent customer bases, such as those in affluent residential neighborhoods or financial district locations in cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. Comparing like to like is essential.

The desired outcome of this portion of the discussion is to understand why the data looks the way it does and to develop a clearer picture of how the manager is approaching customer service trade-offs. Even lower-value clients matter, but the evaluation must account for those trade-offs and ensure they are not negatively affecting shareholder value. If the branch needs additional resources — an extra ATM, an additional teller — to serve all customer segments adequately, that is a regional management responsibility to resolve. The branch is generating substantial revenue, and providing those resources is not an obstacle. These are exactly the kinds of actionable decisions that should emerge from a candid discussion about the customer service data.

Flaws in the Customer Service Measurement System

The discussion of this branch's situation reveals broader problems with Citibank's customer feedback system. First, a sample of 25 customers per branch may or may not be statistically sufficient, depending on the branch's composition. At branches with diverse or skewed customer bases, 25 respondents may not yield a representative sample. For branches with a significant concentration of high-net-worth individuals, the problem is compounded: those clients are busy, less likely to respond to a phone survey, and often insulated by assistants who screen calls. The probability that a 25-person telephone survey captures an accurate picture at such a branch is low.

Sample size may therefore need to increase, but Citibank also needs to develop targeted methods for reaching high-net-worth clients specifically. At branches where this segment accounts for a disproportionate share of revenue and profit, how those clients are served matters far more to the bottom line than how the average client is served. Finding reliable ways to include them in the feedback process is critical to generating meaningful performance data. The sampling methodology must be redesigned with this in mind.

A second problem involves factors that fall outside the branch manager's control. This issue appeared in other sections of the performance evaluation — the Control category in particular — but it also affects the customer survey results. Some survey items cover services that are centralized and not managed at the branch level: ATM maintenance, for example, is typically a contracted, centralized function, and the 24-hour phone line is operated centrally as well. Evaluating a branch manager on dimensions the manager cannot influence produces feedback that is not actionable. There is nothing the manager can do to remedy a centralized service failure, so including those items in a branch-level evaluation serves no useful purpose.

Conclusion

Performance evaluations should be future-oriented. The role they serve is to identify areas of weakness that can be addressed going forward, and otherwise to reward successes. The current system at Citibank does not provide sufficient future orientation. Even if the manager achieves perfect customer service scores in Q4, the weight of the preceding three quarters will drag down the annual evaluation — meaning the evaluation is not effectively guiding future behavior or rewarding recent improvement.

More fundamentally, the performance measures used in the evaluation must accurately reflect strategy. This manager produces strong financial results because he understands how to generate them in this particular environment. Success at this branch may therefore require different measures — or a different application of the same measures — than would be appropriate for the average branch. Where a branch is an outlier in terms of its profit drivers, that reality needs to be built into the evaluation system, so that the manager is oriented toward the actions that will constitute success at that specific branch.

This means adjusting elements of the performance evaluation system — for example, developing branch-specific measures or organizing branches into appropriate peer groups — rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach. The current system, as applied here, does not adequately account for the strategic diversity across Citibank's branch network. Reforming it would produce evaluations that are more accurate, more motivating, and more useful as management tools.

Reference

Davila, A., & Simons, R. (1997). Citibank: Performance evaluation. Harvard Business School, Case No. 9-198-048.