Desire transcends logic: Life's Learning Lessons

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Life's Learning Lessons

This entry serves to re-iterate a point made on 24th September 2004, Friday, entitled "Brown Town".

"Be nice to the person that serves you, and you might get back more than you've requested for."

People engaged in my line of work (i.e. customer service) would usually go out of their way to provide better service to customers that they deem deserve it - That's how I work anyway. I'll never hesitate to run that extra mile to attend to a customer, if it was politely requested: A "Please?" wouldn't hurt. A smile would be appreciated. If the customer would to throw in a joke, it's affirmation that I'll do all my best to please them. It's tiring to go all out, doing your best for everyone. Some probably won't even appreciate it. Which is why I said - "Deserving".

It's amazing how some treat you as though you owe them the world, when they are the ones that owe the bank for using their funds - It's a credit card for goodness sake. Giving the cards away for free doesn't help - When all the other banks are doing the same thing, it all boils down to who can provide the better service. When that happens, the nice people that are actually providing the service get relegated to the slums of the universe. Like I said, we owe them the world.

Take a customer I met today at one of our branches today, the customer service personnel were pretty inconsiderate to redirect them to us without properly assisting to them first. I'm from the online banking department by the way; so, request of a new ATM PIN from me would be a.. Huh? What am I supposed to do? Tap on the offline demo on my laptop and pray that the new PIN appear?

So I told the customer, "Please be patient with me." "But I'm being patient!" he rebuked. "Patience is Virtue." The phase speaks for itself.

Another occasion where a customer asked me something about saving interest. I tried to redirect her to the customer service where they'll be able to provide more accurate information, "But don't you work for the bank?" she went sarcastically. I'm from the Online Banking department, for crying out loud. Would you go to an eye specialist for a liver problem? Just because we work at the bank, we're expected to know everything.

I first started this job, all terrified to go to our branches. That's where the customers would get you to help them with the ATM machines. The situation forced me to learn how to operate the machines more efficiently, and now I can double up as a line manager. It's an advantage I would say - Customers are more compelled to listen to you once you've helped them.

It's not a big problem really; you'll always meet people that give you a hard time, as well as those that are immensely pleasant. You've just got to learn to deal with it.