Money
A right bunch of bankers
By: Seymour Touns
Customer service in Romanian banks is efficient and friendly compared to what you get in Britain, which is nothing less than an insult to one's intelligence
Posted: 22/09/2006
Doubtless some will disagree, but over the last couple of years I have noticed a distinct improvement in the quality of customer service in Romania. The reasons for this are both obvious and subtle. Such a change is partly, I suspect, due to the steady rise in competition and the accompanying introduction of some Western style management practices, but may also be due to more and more Romanians travelling outside of the country, experiencing for themselves the meaning of “good service” and returning home with higher service expectations that their new RON buys them. Certainly there are still some sectors stubbornly holding on to the “don’t know-don’t care” approach (see Mike Brown’s exasperated email about the tax de mediu; Vivid 81), but these are thankfully a slowly dying breed. My own experiences of late have however, been of good-spirited customer service, even when tiresome bureaucratic rules, which call for multiple “stamps” and certificates notarised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, test the tempers of both client and provider.
Take for example my bank in the heart of Bucharest – a branch of a large European institution. The staff are always polite, reliable and helpful; treat all customers with respect, even when some clients have yet to master the art of queue etiquette; the bank’s online banking facility is efficient and easy to navigate; the telephone help desk assistants know what they are talking about and can help with complex problems; and the account managers give useful advice and will look for ways to solve unusual banking requests or situations.
Compare this evolving service standard with the established so called “good service” of one international bank, to be found virtually all over the world today (though not as yet in Romania), which monikers itself “Your Local Bank”. During the last ten years, HSBC has taken the word “customer” out of service, and “personal” out of account. In an attempt to cut costs and increase profits ($20.97 billion in 2005), the bank has installed “call-centres” to deal with all account enquiries – current and savings accounts, credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, etc., etc. To know anything about anything to do with their financial affairs held by this bank, ‘customers’ simply dial a free-phone number to the call centre, enter their account numbers, security codes, date of birth and pet’s collar size, and then are connected with an HSBC representative who will attempt to help them pay a bill, borrow a grand or suggest a recipe for Quiche Lorraine.
Sounds great huh? Think again. In order to reduce costs still further, these call centres have now been outsourced and are actually located outside the UK, in fact anywhere in the world where labour is cheap and overheads minimal. Over the last six months, I have spoken with Joseph in Bangalore, Richard in the Philippines, Suzy in Guangzhou, and Mel in Honduras to name just four. Of course they all speak English, and actually very good English. So much so, that only after a few probing questions do you realise that they are in fact not native speakers, and that despite their ‘given’ English names, are not actually in the UK or have ever been within 2,000 miles of it. Not that they will gladly tell you this. If pressed, they might reluctantly reveal their true location – if not identity.
Their distant location or accent-tinged linguistic skills are not however an issue per se. Personally, I don’t care in the slightest where they are or what their accent is, provided they can help me. The real problem with these call centre operatives is that they are nothing more than strictly trained answer machines, with a limited capacity to deviate from the well-rehearsed replies to the “common scenarios” their trainers have hypnotised them with. They are almost as automated as the touch-tone phones used to reach them. Once a caller deviates from the prescribed script or their extremely narrow frame of reference, they are completely dumb-struck and simply repeat the HSBC mantra that they have memorised. Their knowledge of the banking world and the needs of its customers are non-existent. And who can blame them? Why would someone in Bangalore know what to say when I have my credit card refused at M&S? Why would they understand that I can’t just pop into my local branch (as Richard in the Philippines recently advised) because Bucharest is not around the corner from Holland Park in London?
Instead of any practical help or appreciation of an individual’s personal situation, the caller is deluged with a stream of unconsciousness and vacuous excuses: “All I can do is apologise Mr Touns”; “The system won’t let me Mr Touns”; “I’ll make a note of that in the system Mr Touns”. It’s like trying to get a politician to admit that they screwed up. And don’t bother asking to speak to a manager, because he or she will be less qualified and know even less (if indeed they are the manager – who would ever know?) If pushed, the call centre person may agree to “speak with somebody” for more information, but you must then call them back because they are not allowed to call you back, thus making an exasperating situation even more maddening. Resigned to accept the unacceptable, you dutifully call back, go through the whole log in rigmarole again, only to get through to somebody entirely different in a different call centre in a different country. That person knows nothing about your problem, cannot contact the other call centre (because they don’t have outside lines), and the whole conversation starts all over again with the same outcome: “I’m sorry Mr Touns, the system won’t allow me to do that. If you like you could call back later and ...”
In desperation I have tried contacting a UK branch directly - to speak with my “local branch” in search of some sound reasoning and clarity. To my frustration and rising blood pressure I discovered that no branches of HSBC have telephone numbers. You cannot speak with anybody directly at any branch of HSBC anywhere in the world. Even the UK headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf has no direct line. The only way is to send an email to a nameless job tile and a nameless department. To actually contact them directly, an account holder must physically drag themselves to the branch office - inconvenient if you work or live near the branch and utterly impossible if you live or work miles from your branch or indeed are in another country altogether.
One of the world’s leading international high street banks has successfully built a sarcophagus around its financial empire. They do not want to speak with you – their ‘customers’ – who pay their wages, expand their empire and make them more profits than the annual GDP of Swaziland. The ‘customer’ is an annoyance to be kept strictly at arm’s length. How come I can get a telephone call through to the White House and send an email to Tony Blair, but am unequivocally not permitted to call my local HSBC branch? What do they have to hide? Why are they so afraid of their customers? Whatever happened to service in the financial services sector?
You can say what you like about the sometimes erratic bureaucracy of the banking sector in Romania. They still have much to learn, but they at least know this. Maybe my local Visa card is a thinly disguised debit card; maybe my poor Romanian skills mean my requests are sometimes misunderstood; and maybe I have to have three slips of paper stamped and signed by three different people before I get to my cash. But at least I get to speak to my bank directly by telephone; they understand that without customers they have no bank; and their help desk is a person, not a machine sitting in a Rangoon sweat-shop.
For once I hope that Romania does not learn from the ‘Western’ example, but leads by Romanian example. The people of this country can teach the rest of Europe about the importance of friendliness and face-to-face contact. The service industries should continue to capitalise and build on this unique cultural trait. If they do, they will not only succeed, but surpass anything that the Western service providers claim to offer their customers.
Romanian bankers may also find that they avoid the pejorative double-entendres afforded them by tired and disillusioned ‘customers’ in other parts of the world.
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