Can Effective Customer Service Wipe Out the Long Queues In Banks?

I believe some banks can do better than their main competitors and gain the trust of more customers if they adequately work on the strengths of their personnel. With no intention to spite any bank in particular, you’ll agree with me that Zenith and GT Bank staff are often more professional, polite and friendly in their approach to customer treatment than the staff of other banks in Nigeria.

I also believe and you would agree with me that when you walk into most banking halls, you suddenly feel like you should have been their overall manager so you can be in a better position to work on the attitude of staff to customers by changing the modus operandi in such banks. 

Have you ever waited for hours in a long queue and while still on the line, you see a customer walk in from nowhere to the front of the queue and instead of your banker who is represented by the man attending to your queue to inform him that there are others before him, you suddenly start to hear statements like;

1. “He’s been here before”,
2. “I am not posting it now”, 
3. “Or this very popular one “I have to take this one, it’s above a million and definitely can’t be standing on the queue with such an amount”

And these things happen within a twinkle of an eye and faster than your brain can comprehend, just because that customer is wealthy and can throw some "tips" around before leaving or because that customer is well known by the bank and operates a very large account and most times it happens because the man before you is a relation or a good friend to the customer who just walked in.

Often times when you walk into a bank you discover that the faces of the staff look distant and ready for a fight if you are willing to start one. You tend to get this feeling that they are being forced to do their jobs.

 I get this feeling anytime I walk into one bank branch (name witheld) here in Asaba and it’s not funny.  It makes us (we the customers) believe that our money is safer with us because if you can’t give us a smile for banking our money, then perhaps I have the liberty to believe that you can be careless with my funds, given the fact that you are being forced to receive my money.

Whether we like it or not, cases like this happen every day and not just in banks but in most privately owned establishments as well as government owned agencies and it’s appalling.

On a personal note, these misshapen may look benign, but from a global perspective they give a bad outlook to the image of companies and firms. 

For those it may concern, please have a re-think and be passionate about your job or resign if you feel that you are not in the right profession, because whatever you think you are doing will only continue to make you unhappy and you may eventually lose your job through sack or retrenchment for non satisfactory performance in your duties.