S** Happens – It’s Just What You Do About It.

 Around a month ago, I had the awful experience of having to spend my entire working day sitting in the DBS Bank Marina Bay Financial Centre. The adventure started at 11 in the morning and ended at nearly 5pm. It was in military speak a total failure in as much as after waiting for the better part of the day, I still didn’t come close to getting what I needed to get done.

Now, I get that banking can be a bureaucratic process and in fairness to DBS, they are not the only bank that has made me wait for what you could call an unreasonable amount of time. I had a similar experience with OCBC, though admittedly I did get what I wanted after the wait.

I point out those examples not because I as a customer, was made to wait for what I considered to be an unreasonable amount of time. I took issue with the fact that I had to wait but because it seemed that the wait was due to bad design of the process. It was as if the process was designed for the bank to wallow in self-importance (as if the bank CEO got a hard on looking at the number of people waiting for service) rather than on providing customer service. The front-line staff had to constantly rush to the back room to check things and at OCBC it appeared that nobody was interested in the customer facing part of the job.

As has been said “s** happens.” My experiences in both banks could have been due to bad luck. I could have, for example, when the branch manager had received a dressing down from head office for having a branch that looked empty the day before. However, while ne can accept that “s*** happens,” one ultimately judges the organisation on what they do about it.

Thankfully for Singapore’s financial sector, there are positive examples of how organisations deal with “S***” when it happens. Today’s example comes from CIMB, a Malaysian bank.

My interaction with CIMB is helping my day-job boss pay his credit card bills. I visit the branch on a monthly basis. The process is relatively fast. I end up doing what I need to do within 10 minutes of entering the branch.

Today, was slightly different. The branch was crowded. All the counters were filled and the brank officer told me that although he was happy to give me a number, but suggested I go for lunch first because there were 15 people ahead of me.

However, I decided to wait. Within five minutes of waiting, someone came around to distribute biscuits:

 

 It was nothing elaborate but it was thoughtful gesture. It made it feel as if the bank was genuinely sorry that we, the customers were going to have to wait and it had a cute little bit of branding.

Interestingly enough, it didn’t take that long to get service. Sure, I waited a bit longer than usual but they made it such that I didn’t feel that the wait was due to satisfy some overpaid pencil pusher jacking off over people waiting to get hold of their money.