Banking on customer service
Recently Ethos Consultancy shared the findings of its 6th Annual Bank Benchmarking Index for service excellence. While it claims a marginal improvement, its not nearly enough. And the foreign banks did not fair well at all. If you follow #UAEBanks on Twitter, service here is abysmal.
Most of us owe banks in some form or the other but to be harangued and abused is not the way to get your money back. Or wasn't that taught to you in customer service classes. The banks add call centres to 'increase communications' but fail to provide proper training or authorisation to these call centres. Its a question of dollars and cents methinks and the call centre with the cheapest rates wins.
But if you speak to the bank, they justify some of these calls or attitudes. They feel they don't do anything wrong. I think its time they proved to us that they do care about their customers. I think we should have a panel discussion - with media and audience - where the top 5 and the bottom 5 banks' representatives are available - customer service representatives - to give us the customers an understanding of why they do what they do. Half the audience would be made up of specific customers these banks would invite for the discussion (that they are comfortable with) and the other half would be media and open to public (limited to first come first served basis).
I am sure Ethos as the originator of the study would be happy to moderate.
So here's my message to UAE Banks - are you up for this? Defend yourself and listen to what we have to say.
