Basic rules for retail banking would help
The Mountain Mail, May 2003
By William Dylan Powell

Imagine that somebody took away your name and gave you a number, placed you in a crowded cell under surveillance, where your only activity is watching hours burn away as you fear for your safety and try to not let the system lure you into endangering your future.

The uniformed staff exchanges nervous glances, unable to show fear out of concern for rioting. I am, of course, describing the typical retail banking experience.

I was recently forced to visit my bank, unable to get help though the valium-voiced 800-number or Twilight Zone communication vacuum of Web forms.
What I found shocked me. Unacceptably long lines. Sweatshop overworked staff. Let’s face it — the state of retail banking is boiling blood pressure on both sides of the till.

Thirty minutes into my banking experience, I — a normally congenial fellow — was tempted to commit multiple acts of assault using chained pens as nunchakas, razor-sharp deposit slips as ninja death stars and a mortgage application as a low interest suppository for the customer in front of me.
Banks make a profit lending money, not granting easy access to it. Good capitalism dictates they spend money on marketing and execution of those activities — mortgages, credit cards, investment banking. And consumers have such chronic Attention Deficit Disorder they’re unwilling to perform the simplest of tasks.

Throughout America, bank rage thrives. Lines swell as jumpy tellers man a wall of terminals in front of customers who moan, glance at their watches and stare at the ceiling as if invoking the wrath of the Muzak gods.

Making the retail banking experience less tense and time-consuming is possible with commitment from both sides. Here’s how.

What Banks Can Do

1. Stop killing the tellers. They’re supposed to stand during increasingly long workdays with increasingly fewer helpers and almost no days off.

Their software is constantly changing, and because nobody wants to pay for training, career movement is horizontal, not vertical. Amid all this they’re supposed to have Christ-like compassion? Get real.

2. Refrain from patronizing customers. Just because someone isn’t a banker doesn’t mean they have the IQ of an onion.

I’ve heard bank staff talk down to people from all walks of life for not understanding the bank’s policies or processes. Chances are they wouldn’t be this condescending if they met the same people at their workplaces as judges, actresses, teachers, engineers or martial arts instructors.

If customers are having problems understanding processes, it is the bank’s fault.

3. Monitor customer experience. Regularly perform basic research on customer experience at your bank.

Include not just transaction efficiency, but the environment, employee interaction, ease of finding the information and paperwork and specific use cases for visiting. Outside companies — secret shoppers — can do this for you inexpensively.

What Consumers Can Do

1. Please be prepared. Don’t complain about waiting forever in line and then reach the teller window without having filled out your deposit slip. Throw them a bone.

Fill out the paperwork as completely as possible. Pay attention. Write legibly.
And keep the chitchat to a minimum.

2. Don’t shoot the messenger. Don’t yell at the tellers about an obscene bank fee, constricting policy or inconvenient methodology.

They didn’t make the rules and have no power to change them. Please note it’s also not their fault if your balance is too small, you bounced a check or you didn’t schedule enough time to allow for all your personal errands.

3. Put complaints in writing. Dissatisfied with something? Write a letter to the bank’s management and let it know specifically what’s bothering you. Provide details: names, dates and copies of any associated paperwork. For every person who complains, several stay silent. Speak up or nothing will change.

Cash will soon be obsolete, but banks are nevertheless still a necessity. So on both sides of the coin, let’s try to remember beneath the illegibly penned third-party personal checks and automaton unisex golf shirts exist real-life people.
People, not numbers; people with ambitions; people with fears; people who catch colds, have scary dreams and fall hopelessly in love. People who don’t want to feel imprisoned by their errands or their jobs.

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