Why aren’t you happy with your bank?

I could go on forever with this one.  But the fact of the matter is with all of the technology and systems thrown at the banking industry it should have freed us all up to spend more face time with our customers to learn their needs and provide them the right amount of service.  Instead things that are supposed to make life easier for us and the customer seems to only make them angrier when it doesn’t work like it is sold.   Not only that, but customers get the impression that they are looked at as just numbers to make sales quotas.  For instance, there is this trend for tellers to be selling to customers.  Yet I would guarantee if you asked that teller a lot of detail about the product they are selling they couldn’t answer it.  Nothing annoys customers more than waiting in a long line at the bank for a simple transaction while a teller prolongs another customers  transaction time with a “sale”.  If I go to the bank to make a deposit that is all I want to do.  I don’t need a teller offering me a second checking account.  (This recently happened to me.)  I’ve even been reading where if a customer calls to complain about a simple error at Chase the first words out of the mouth from the person on the phone is to offer to close their account.  How is that customer service?  All the customer wants is the problem fixed they never thought about leaving.  I hope is a simple misunderstanging, but obviously harmful, mistake on the part of the call center staff and not corporate policy.

There are also examples of the circle of hell.  You contact a call center and they can’t answer or solve your problem, then you are directed to the website ”so you can do it yourself”, which also doesn’t work and you go to the branch to speak to a CSR, who in turn has to call for assistance.  This is the part of the blog where you are laughing uncontrollably because you have witnessed this scenario.  Why is this such a problem in our industry?  Are the products so complicated that the staff can’t explain them?  Are there so many workarounds in an antiquated mainframe that the staff spends more time and money fixing things than booking new business?

Today customers have the internet avenue to voice their frustration.  They use it to collaborate on solutions and workarounds of their own.  If one user finds an “unlisted” 800 number around the voicemail phone tree.  They post it for anyone to get and use.  If one customer had a bad experience they will post the exact sequence of events.  Even about banks that have a reputation of being customer friendly.  And for banks that have had struggles with customer service over the years (BoA and PNC).  There are also blogs like Thad Peterson’s “Banking on Customers” that works to help identify problems and solutions in customer service from the bank’s viewpoint.

One area as an industry that we have pushed to the limit is fees.  We have all become reliant on fees for their stable source of non-interest income.  I would contend that there are a couple of ways to use fees.  The one that has been around forever is to dissuade negative behavior (bounced checks and overdrafts) which I feel is appropriate.  But the one that started small and grew and grew, levies a fee for positive or neutral behavior (ATM).  We have either reached the limit that consumers are willing to accept since now the number of ATM transactions is shrinking or we are almost there.  Some banks and brokerages are now offering to reimburse customers for ATM fees they incur outside of that institutions network.  If this keeps up that source of income is going to shrink if not disappear altogether because customers are no longer willing to pay it.

It appears not many, if any, institutions are exploring a way to make their website a money maker.  Why not sell ads to area businesses on your website?  This can start to make up for a reduction in other sources of revenue.  If you can make a splash by having no fees and have this source of revenue to fall back on then you also have a leg up on your competition.  Not to mention by being the first to do it you can get the cream of your local companies to advertise.  This in turn should make your website revenue dollars go up.  Why not even do a joint promotion with a local business?  It is a new operating environment that we are working in.  We need to think smarter and more creatively while keeping the customer mind.