ABSTRACT
Quality control in banking. 1 Banks have only recently taken an interest in quality control, but there are several reasons for this. Quality control has been associated with manufacturing and when applied to banking seemed nebulous and difficult, not only to describe but to explain how it could be applied to banking operations. In the past banking operations were manual and subject to continuous checking. It was hard to talk to managers about quali~ and as far as customer relations were concerned they were taken for granted since they never seemed to pose any problems. There was an audit staff plus State or Federal bank auditors trying to find errors. There was a tradition of being accurate and careful. Moneys had to be accounted for daily and balance sheets had to be made public. Furthermore, there was no public hue and cry about banks in general and customer service in particular. Banks were rated high in public esteem in public opinion polls, but it was finally realized that public opinion can quickly erode. Quality control is just now beginning to receive attention, due to a number of reasons, including a shift from manual to computer operations and the realization that productivity needed to be improved.
