Author Archives: trainridetothecity

What happen to the personal relationships with everyday bank?

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When I was in Sri Lanka five years ago, I used to bank with Commercial Bank. Bank manager at Union Place branch was friendly and approachable, but didn’t stop there. I was able to directly call or email him and he did promptly reply.

I didn’t have millions in the account or earn millions but bank did meet my expectations.

Let’s fast forward five years, I migrated to Australia started to bank with Commonwealth Bank. Didn’t earn millions still but did alright to ensure I had a good revenue stream and did save a bit.

Compared to Commercial Bank, Commonwealth Bank is big and made billions more profit and paid their CEO in millions. But I always got frustrated with most of the Interactions with them.

Why? I didn’t have a single point of contact. I couldn’t call or email someone directly. I didn’t have the visibility what’s going on in that big yellow box.

I do understand they want to add more 0s to the profit on their annual report and satisfy their shareholders. But how about their loyal customers that put their faith and hard earned cash in to the their vault? How about investing that profit to change the culture to improve the personal relationship?

At the end customers do matter! And without them you cannot satisfy your shareholders.

You want fries with that?

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I went to the Commonwealth bank to handover the invoice from the builder. This is the conversation with the lady with the counter.

Me: I got a construction loan with your bank and I got my first progressive payment invoice from builder. What am I suppose to do?

Bank Customer Officer: checking my details on the computer. Do you have xxxx product? And it will be good for you. ( Something totally unrelated to what I asked?)

Me: All I want is get this invoice to correct people and get the payment to the builder.

I don’t know what sort of training these people are getting, I understand the need for the up-sell from your existing customers to ensure your CEO can announce a record breaking profit! But please answer what I asked before you try to get more money out of me.

EDIT: I handed over the document and they promised that it will be faxed to the construction loan team. I called up next day because I had feeling they were incompetent. And my instinct was right construction team hasn’t received the document. So I faxed them by my self! So does this rant relate to this post?

So I went to the branch again. Know what? it was the same lady and she did the same thing! She tried to up-sell again without checking why the documents were not received by the construction team. That was it! I complained to the branch manager.

Well I don’t think it will do anything, but they should know where to draw the line. CBA you can’t up-sell without addressing my inquiry!.