A New Account? I have Reports to do!

Have you been on either side of this conundrum? It’s amazingly clear how wrong it is, but when you are in the moment, you can be so burdened with tasks (Task Saturation) that if you were a pilot, the plane would go down.

Stop and ask yourself, and allow your team to do the same. We have to give our staff the empowerment to use their judgement, and then back them up when they do right by it.

The specific scenario today goes like this: A man walks in the bank, he tells the banker “I would like to open a new account” The banker looks perplexed, agitated and strikes a glare before she realizes what she’s done (too late). Brings her facial expression to some sort of resolve, and says, “What kind of account?” to which he says, “the Kind with $200,000 that earns an APY of 3.27% for 6 months, but Thank you, I see you are busy” and he heads straight to the door. (She was under stress because she has a report due.)

The Report? “How many Deposits were opened in the last quarter, and the effects of customer service on new account openings”

Wait! It gets better!

This particular Banker I am speaking of is WONDERFUL! She is a lovely, personable person. How could this happen, then? I’ll tell you how. The incredible desire she has to be seen as valuable in the eyes of her management, had her completely blind to the most important thing – NO – The ONLY thing we are there for. To satisfy customers that will be willing to entrust their funds to us, so we can keep it safe and earn our livelihood.

She was caring and brave enough to convey what happened to senior management. Her manager contacted this person (how, I cannot tell you, I shudder to think that she actually ran out to his car, but, it could happen)

He was so bewildered by the most embarrassing move, that he actually came back and opened the account. I was amazed that he did, but with fuel prices as they are, he probably figured another 2 miles to another bank.. etc etc.

Lesson learned – Let’s make sure we don’t saturate our customer-facing employees with internal pressures that may cause them to temporarily forget that the customer is #1.