What is Your Front Line Staff Really Like?
by Mark Arnold
Financial institutions preach service, service, service. We train our front line staff to offer a friendly greeting, make eye contact, use the consumer’s name and know at least something about our products and services. But is your front line staff really performing these basic service tasks?
My guess is not on a consistent basis.
When crafting brand plans for clients, we routinely visit their competitors to see how the competition’s service, sales and marketing is. While working with a client recently on the west coast, I conducted mystery shops at a number of their competitors.
Here are some of the observations (and note that I visited large national banks, local credit unions and small regional banks):
- At a grocery store branch, the teller did not ask me my name or tell me hers.
- At a credit union, the person greeting me did not offer to escort me back to the member service representative; the member service rep then did not ask me my name either (and then when I asked her what the credit union was about, she said they were all about service—are you kidding me?!).
- When I asked a credit union member service representative what was the difference between a bank and a credit union they said, “We are owned by our members not the Federal Reserve.”
- At a large national bank I wasn’t greeted or acknowledged for several minutes; then when I finally got to a personal banker, he never once asked me my name or gave me his (by this point I was so mad I actually walked back into the branch and told him the next time someone comes in, he might try introducing himself and getting their name).
I conducted five or more mystery shops and the above comments capture the gist of the experience in most cases: no introductions, no greeting, no name use and no complete knowledge of products.