Where Customer Service Is Hiding

As soon as folks learn that you work for a bank or other financial institution, you will immediately hear a horror story of some really crappy customer service. No matter how small a detail or how large a problem, there is always a story about how rude the customer service people are. Or how inefficient they are. Or how many times the depositor was transferred, or referred, or put on hold by the person who answered the phone. Or how many automatic answering choices there are before you can get to a real person on the telephone - if ever.

I had one person tell me there were five choices before the message finally got to, "If you'd like us to return your call, please leave your number at the sound of the tone and we'll call you back as soon as possible." The tone then sounded, and was immediately followed with a dial tone, cutting off the call! The good news is that the bigger the financial institution, the more chance there is that you're dialing an 800 number, so the cost of the call is theirs. The bad news is that the bigger the institution, the more likely it is that you're going to be on that number for a long time - and perhaps get a chance to really get to know their phone system.

Where, then, is the good customer service hiding?

We found it.

It's in the smaller financial institutions.

We were in Vancouver, British Columbia, ready to board a Princess cruise ship when I got a call from home. My small home town based bank noticed a check for several thousand dollars coming in against our account, and they weren't quite satisfied with the signature. They wanted to know if we wanted it paid or not. It just so happened the invoice for our cruise came in as we were packing, and the check was written in a big hurry and stuck in the mail. It arrived at our bank for payment after we had left home. That hurried signature didn't quite match the careful signature on the card, so my bank questioned it. Of course we told them to pay it - we didn't want to be thrown off the ship! After I hung up the phone, I thought to myself, "Now that's wonderful customer service!" I learned later that all checks over $1000 were pulled from the bulk file and checked.

Just a short while ago a good friend who has an account at a very large mega-bank got his statement and found a $1,500 check in there that was totally out of number sequence, was a different size and color, different format, but bore his account number and name. He called his bank immediately and was told that his account would eventually be credited with the amount, and that he might like to close the account and open another. When he asked how such a thing could happen, he was told, "Well, nobody really knows. Don't worry about it." He did his own investigating and found some details about the negotiation that he called back with, and was informed they really didn't care. It wasn't enough to worry about!

Guess where his account is now.

We know the big banks are going after the big, commercial accounts. Personal accounts are not what they are looking to service. There has been a lot of talk about how the mergers are going to put the "little guys" out of business. But we think they'll be around for a long, long time. They only way the big guys can put the little guys out of business is to initiate some good, solid, friendly customer service. And so far, at least in some cases, that just isn't happening.

If you want that kind of customer service, you have to go to the smaller financial institutions. That's where great customer service is hiding.

Copyright © 1999 Bankers' Hotline. Originally appeared in Bankers' Hotline, Vol. 9, No. 7, 8/99