legalmoose: (Default)
legalmoose ([personal profile] legalmoose) wrote2004-09-03 09:51 am

Customer Service

Seems to be my week for customer service stuff.

In line at the bank, three tellers. One has a "next teller please" and appears to be arranging her cash stocks. Fine, but do that at 10, not at 9:30 when you have 6-8 customers in line, thanks. Second teller has a commercial customer (not at the commercial line, mind you) who is taking forever because he wants large amounts of small cash and coins. Third teller seems to just be slow, period. Commercial guy finishes up, and the teller puts up a "next teller please" sign and proceeds to do cash maintenance. Still 6-8 people in line. I'm at the head of the line finally, and the third teller comes free, but a manager comes in, sees the other two tellers are "busy" and grabs the free teller to do something. So now there are no tellers working with customers, out of three standing behind the glass.

Teller one comes back online and moves her sign and quickly handles my deposit. I mildly admonish her when she asks how I'm doing ("Fine, but I'd be doing better if y'all would handle your administrative tasks sometime when you don't have 6-8 people in line."). Then I decide, transaction completed (took all of maybe 20 seconds? a simple deposit* was all I was doing), I go up to the manager and let her have it over the piss-poor customer service. She handled it well, you can tell she's been trained on dealing with disagreeable customers, though a bit more sincerity in the apology and less perfunctoriness would have been appreciated.

* I don't use ATMs for deposits, ever since my first grand jury service where no less than three banks testified as to their ATM deposit handling procedures. Can't tell you much about the testimony, but suffice to say I will never, ever use an ATM to desposit anything. I want the live person handling it, confirming it, and giving me a slip certifying that they did so.

[identity profile] draco-kc.livejournal.com 2004-09-03 07:58 am (UTC)(link)
At least you have the option of making an ATM deposit.

My checking account is at a back three-quarters across the state. (It's the same bank I've had since high school. I haven't changed due to inertia, plus the fact that there's a couple of free services I get from that bank that none of the local ones are willing to provide without additional charges, if at all.) There are no local branches (well, there is one forty minutes down the highway in another city, but that's usually not a feasible option, giving my need to work during banking hours). So, I don't have the option of a face-to-face transaction when I want to make a deposit.

I don't make deposits often (only a handful of times each year, for tax refunds, rebate checks, and the like). I used to be able to make deposits at ATM's, but starting two or three years ago, they no longer were able to accept ATM deposits. (They claimed it was because of new software they were running on their end.)

So, now, I want to deposit something, I have to mail it across the state to the bank! Not the most comforting state of affairs.

[identity profile] eyow.livejournal.com 2004-09-03 02:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, me too. My bank's actually in Texas, and I've always had to mail deposits. They do, however, have excellent customer service, and I've been with them for more than ten years, and NEVER had a deposit lost. And I make a lot of deposits. :O