Silent Office
My friend, she says to me, “Sometimes, I feel that no-one’s manning the world.” She called a customer-service help-line because her online banking had crashed, and nobody picked up. She tells me how long she waited.
The typical help-line experience, right? This is her feedback, by the way, if her feedback is important to you? Her feedback is: twenty-five minutes.
I took a cheque (look it up: I still get them sometimes) to the bank branch in the next town because the bank branch in my town had closed down, and paid it in using the ATM. That worked, but when I went to the counter to ask about something else — staff sickness.
I thought later: they have enough staff to sit behind the glass looking helpful, but not enough for anybody to come out and help.
Mind you, banks, right?
I went home and tried my own bank’s customer-service help-line — just out of curiosity, really. Yes, they’re still playing the same recorded message. My bank has been experiencing “unprecedented demand” since the beginning of the pandemic.
But my call is important to them, which gives me a nice, warm feeling.
My question is this.
How is it even possible for a bank’s customer-service help-line not to pick up immediately?
We all have mobile phones these days — every banker, every manager and just about every customer carries a mobile phone wherever they go. How is it even possible for anybody, anywhere, at any time not to be able to get through to somebody? Somebody?
I mean, if the switchboard’s busy, divert the phone to a manager, or to somebody in another department? It’s not rocket science.
Why do banks — or any of us, really — even pretend to be efficient?
Automated, yes, but efficient? Pick up the phone!
Inevitably, I will get an email asking me for feedback on my experience of going into the bank branch (in the next town). My feedback is important to them, you see.
Maybe I should take my email into the bank branch (in the next town) and ask if there’s anybody free to pull up a chair and discuss my feedback.
Give them a nice warm feeling.
I see NASA’s still trying to launch that rocket.
William Essex is author of E-Commerce in Retail Banking (Informa) and What do Mummy and Daddy do while YOU are asleep? (Thingley Press).
