Customer Service Tips

Some days you just can’t win.

I have a friend who is the branch manager at a local bank. Recently a customer came into the bank and announced to the teller that she was closing her account. This happens in banks from time to time; people move their accounts for all sorts of reasons. However, when the teller politely asked about reasons she was closing her account (and taking a fairly large chunk of change out the door), the customer let it be known in no uncertain terms that she was moving her money because she was fed up with what she described as the bank’s “lousy customer service.”

Well, as you can imagine, that got everyone’s attention, and the customer was ushered into my friend’s office. She proceeded to detail for him several incidences of what she considered to be very slow, indifferent service from bank employees. She complained that she was sometimes kept waiting as long as 30 minutes when she came into the bank or phoned to conduct business. She felt that bank employees were treating her as a stranger, even though she had been a customer for many years and had substantial funds on deposit. My friend patiently listened to her complaints, using a number of the customer service techniques I discuss in this space every month, but in the end he was not able to deter her from her decision. The bank cut her a cashier’s check and she walked out the door.

As you might imagine, my friend was deeply disturbed with this outcome. Providing exceptional customer service is a top priority at his branch. He quickly convened a meeting with the head teller and other operations personnel to discuss the situation. The first thing he found out was that federal Patriot Act rules were part of the problem. Customers must produce approved ID to conduct certain transactions. Unfortunately, the name on this customer’s driver’s license did not match the name on her account. This, in turn, caused a delay in processing the request, while the teller went through a protocol to confirm the customer’s ID. If the bank was busy, this confirmation process could take several minutes. It didn’t take 30 minutes, but it might have felt that way to the customer.

The problem had been carefully explained to the customer several times. The customer’s position was that by now all the tellers should know who she was and this should not be a problem. Of course, the bank has a large number of customers and there are at lease six tellers on duty at any given time, so the chances of anyone instantly recognizing her are slim. In addition, the tellers all felt this lady had an “attitude;” impatient, pushy, and dismissive. As a group, they all felt they had done their level best to serve her, but she was never willing to accept the fact that the combination of strict federal guidelines and the discrepancy between her ID and her account name created a situation that was simply out of their control.

So, who was right (or wrong) – the customer or the tellers? The truth is it doesn’t make any difference. It is the bank’s job to go the extra mile to overcome obstacles that make it difficult for the customer to do regular business. The fact that the customer seemed to be irritated and impatient is not a reason to care less about giving good service, it is challenge to do more. It doesn’t make any difference that there is a discrepancy between the customer ID and the account number. The bank should have not only explained the problem to the customer, they should have done something about it!

They could have flagged the file so that any teller looking up the account would have instantly understood the problem. In addition, a memo could have been distributed to all the tellers the first time the problem occurred, notifying them that in the future they could encounter a problem processing the ID for this customer. There are probably more things that could have been done; the problem is that nothing was done except the minimum, which was to use the Patriot Act as an excuse for poor service. The worst thing you can ever do in customer service is blame someone or something else for the problem, instead of finding a way to fix it.

So, what can my friend do now? The absolutely wrong thing to do would be to write this off as “one of those things;” you know, a dumb government rule meets a customer that is impossible to please. Yes, this particular customer – and her money – is gone, but there is still a lesson to be learned; several lessons, in fact. At the very least, my friend must now call a meeting of the tellers and discuss what should be done the next time this kind of problem occurs. By coming up with a clear policy, they will at least reduce the risk of losing any more customers (and any more money), should this kind of problem occur again.

When you are having a difficult time pleasing a customer:

1. Don’t blame the problem on something that is “out of your hands.”
2. Don’t blame the problem on the customer.
3. Don’t make excuses for why the problem exists.
4. Don’t ignore the problem and hope it goes away.
5. Fix the problem; find a way to accommodate the needs of the customer.

Bad service is NEVER the customer’s fault.