A Tale of Two Stories

Thoughts on the sorry state of customer experience at large service providers. 

The other day I received a largish check from a client of mine, a financial institution in Canada. In retrospect, I should have known better, but I did what seemed logical at the time. I filled out a deposit slip, stuck the check and slip into an envelope, and put both into an ATM machine at my friendly, large, branch-on-every-corner bank.

My decision was logical in the sense that I was well trained by my bank to avoid entering the branch. That, after all, was the operating philosophy of many large banks during the nineties. Drive the customer to the ATM, phone, and web through carrots (lower fees if you went to low cost channels or brought in more business) and sticks (higher fees if you persisted in wanting human contact).

The part about knowing better is that I consult with banks and I know for a fact that they’re all on a justifiable crusade to lock down on fraud—and the numbers would