So Much for Customer Care

This was how I felt (and most certainly looked) like for almost two hours while I was in my bank today:       

Now, imagine some other thirty people before and after me looking and feeling exactly the same way.

I don’t like myself very much when this happens.

But it does happen, whenever I go to Banco de Oro. There is a long queue of similar-looking depositors for, at the very least, one hour, blubbering and blustering, but they stay in line anyway. There are no chairs, no welcoming smile, just gestapo-like guards, a chilly atmosphere, and a long line of people waiting endlessly for their turn to be served by two apathetic tellers.

You’d think that a bank with this type of non-service would be abandoned by depositors and the tellers be left counting their fingers instead of money. But no, this gargantuan bank is now probably the biggest in the country, having bought out one of the bigger banks recently.

This defies everything I teach in my Customer Care and Service class. The growing number of textbooks being written on the subject says this clearly: with globalization, the only way to survive in business, and to rise above competitors, is to be customer-oriented.

One must give the customer the caring he deserves from end to end. Starting with product development, the customer’s welfare must be paramount—until he has experienced the product, so that he will come back for more, again and again. The books also have many case studies on successful customer-oriented companies.

The customer is king. Not King-kong.

Yet, why do people—me included—stay with this bank?

It’s the only bank open till seven at night every day, from Monday to Saturday. This unique service guarantees the bank a bulk of customers—seething though they maybe. I guess there has to be a trade-off somewhere: longer hours sans customer care vs. shorter hours with topnotch customer care.  

The textbooks tell me unique service and customer care ought to go together. But that would be expecting too much, or open to debate for which—after my legs have gone into rigor mortis for two hours—I have no more energy.

What does it take to persevere? Grace from above.