Hello? Standard Bank? Can anyone hear me? This is your customer calling. The same customer who has been with you for 20 years now (although at this point she really is wondering why). I`m trying to get hold of a body, any "body" will do.
The reason I cannot get hold of anybody is because, in your infinite wisdom, you have elected to install a centralised customer service line. This means that if I want a body at a branch, any branch, I have to phone the central number. Calling the individual branch number takes you through to the same system.
At the centralised centre (hur, hur) you get to chat to glorified switchboard operators who will politely put you through to the branch of your choice.
Once there, the phone rings 12 times before being diverted to a lovely American male voice, which politely tells you the number has changed and for local queries you must dial the centralised number, and international callers can dial the individual number. You then get to dial and repeat again.
Would now be a good time to mention how much I HATE automated telephony systems?
Samantha Perry, features editor, Brainstorm
Would now be a good time to mention how much I HATE automated telephony systems? The brain surgeons who design these can never get it sufficiently right that I dial anything other than "0" for operator assistance.
And I completely fail to see the point of a centralised customer system. I call a number, I ask for the branch, I get transferred, I get no answer. This is better than me calling the branch and getting no answer how precisely? At the end of the day, the result is going to be me getting the moer in, driving down there and threatening at least three people with a lawsuit. Yes?
I`ve decided that, after 20 years of unutterably indifferent treatment, I am leaving Standard Bank, and taking my bond, investment accounts and the small fortune I pay in service fees every year with me. Anyone who has recommendations for a bank that, firstly, doesn`t believe in robbing its customers blind, and, secondly, believes in being responsive and communicative, please let me know.
In the meantime, will Standard Bank and the like please catch a wake-up. We are PEOPLE, not numbers or machines, or your pension funds in waiting.
We would like to be treated as individual human beings with individual wants, needs, dreams, desires and hopes. If you are going to insist on dehumanising the customer experience, then you can reasonably expect to soon be de-customered.
Any kind souls with bank recommendations can mail me on samantha@itweb.co.za. And thus ends today`s rant.
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