At the bank today, I noticed that the terminals used for customers, in front of the teller windows were not functioning. Indeed, the tellers were forced to collect driver’s licenses in order to process transactions.
I asked why they didn’t have a tech out yet to repair the problem. The bank employee answered that they had spent an hour on the phone with someone in India and they finally gave up with no solution provided.
I was in financial services for a long time. The last thing an institution wants to do is compromise its customer-facing employees with malfunctioning technology. The employee ends up having a real rough day as they try to explain to customers why there are some transactions that cannot be processed. Many customers just blame it on the employee and they leave in a huff.
But this may not be the real gripe here. My personal experience with customer service, outsourced overseas, is dismal. I have never been helped by anyone who picked up the phone in India or the Philippines or anywhere else outside the U.S. So companies, looking to save money, are willing to hand their customers or clients a bad experience in exchange for increased profits.
There has to be a breaking point. Apparently, the customers just bite their lips and live with the inconvenience. If enough complained and took their business elsewhere, maybe more companies would shell out the extra bucks to keep the service offering in a domestic locale. On the other hand, the employees of the bank need their jobs and can only endure the extra difficulty that their employer’s money-pinching produces.
There should be a national movement to end this practice. It would bring badly-needed jobs back to the U.S. and it would keep the blood pressure of frustrated customers in check, allowing them to simply hang up the phone; instead of slamming it into its cradle.
