By Business Insider Reporter
Stanbic Bank Tanzania has begun Customer Service Week (CSW) 2026 with a renewed focus on innovative and empowering services, highlighting practical changes designed to make it easier for customers to trade, grow their businesses and access banking services.
Running under the theme “The Extra Mile,” this year’s Customer Service Week is being used by the bank to demonstrate how listening to customers can translate into tangible changes rather than remain a promise of better service.
One of the clearest examples is the lender’s introduction of direct Chinese yuan payments for Tanzanian businesses trading with China. Since August, customers have been able to settle payments to Chinese suppliers directly in yuan, removing the need to first route transactions through the US dollar.
The development is particularly relevant to Tanzania’s trading community given the scale of economic activity between the two countries. China is Tanzania’s largest source of imports, with goods worth US$8.17 billion arriving from China last year.
Speaking at Stanbic’s Ubungo Branch in Dar es Salaam at the opening of CSW 2026, Chief Executive Manzi Rwegasira said the bank’s growing customer base was an outcome of the daily effort employees put into serving customers.
“The growth in our customer base is starting to show, and it is helping the business as a whole. But the numbers are the outcome, not the reason. It is the little things you do every day to serve your customers that make the difference.”
The bank says this approach is driving changes across international trade, enterprise development and everyday banking, broadening the meaning of customer service beyond the traditional branch experience.
Through the Stanbic Biashara Incubator, more than 5,000 entrepreneurs have received training and mentoring, while more than 600 small and medium-sized enterprises have gone on to supply larger companies. More than half of those businesses are led by women, according to the bank.
The enterprise programme provides another dimension to Stanbic’s customer-service proposition: helping customers not only access financial services but develop the capabilities and commercial relationships needed to grow.
The bank is similarly taking banking services closer to customers through digital channels. Customers can now open accounts and receive payments on a phone, helping people who may not be able to easily reach a physical branch.
Together, the initiatives point to a broader interpretation of “The Extra Mile” – one in which customer service is linked to solving practical customer problems and creating opportunities for customers to participate more effectively in the economy.
Head of Personal and Private Banking Omari Mtiga said this required employees to understand customers rather than simply process their requests.
“For me, going the extra mile means three things: listen more, care more, own more. Clients do not simply expect to be served. They expect to be understood.”
That emphasis on understanding customers is being reinforced throughout Customer Service Week, with activities taking place across Stanbic branches nationwide.
Bank teams will visit customers at their places of business, while senior leaders will meet customers directly in branches, bringing management closer to the people using the bank’s services.
Head of Service Lilian Abdulmalik said the objective was for the standard demonstrated during the week to continue beyond the five-day campaign.
“This week we are coming to our customers rather than waiting for them. But the standard we set this week is the standard we intend to hold in every branch, every week of the year.”
This makes the 2026 Customer Service Week less about a standalone annual event and more about reinforcing a service culture across the bank. The week will close at Vijibweni Hospital on Friday, where Stanbic will undertake a corporate social investment activity as part of its continued support for health in the communities it serves.
“Our customers have carried this bank forward for more than three decades,” Mr Rwegasira said. “This week we thank them, and we promise to keep going further for them.”
